Climate Anxiety: Teaching Hope. A Pre-Earth Day Conversation with Martha Meyer and Patricia Newman

As adults, we have a responsibility to our young readers. There are problems with the world in which we live. How do we teach children about these problems without, at the same time, giving them anxiety?

At Evanston Public Library, library employee Martha Meyer pondered this very question. In the days of the COVID lockdown she tried to figure out the best possible solution, and what she came up with was The Blueberry Award. A play on the “Newbery” Award, Blueberry winners celebrate a love of science and of nature. They also take into account climate anxiety and actively work to alleviate its effects. What does that work look like? Consider the following:

Anti-Climate Anxiety Criteria for the Blueberry Awards

1. Love of nature first, climate action 2nd. (You only save what you love.)

2. Recommend GROUP or team action, not going it alone

3. Must include practical suggestions for mitigating the actual problem shared in the text

4. State (or imply) that adults are engaged.  Never: It’s up to YOU or young people alone.

5. Follow child development guidelines about what kind of information kids can handle at which age. 

– Talk to us a little bit about climate anxiety. What is it? And when did you start to notice the children’s books that reinforced it (inadvertently, of course, but even so). 

Source: Louise Chawla, Prof Emeritus, U of C, Boulder, Scientific Advisory Council of the Children and Nature Network gave a lecture at the Brookfield Zoo in 2023 which led to these more formal guidelines.

Today, Martha Meyer, the founder of the Blueberry Award, comes to us in a discussion with author Patricia Newman. As described on numerous sites, “Patricia Newman’s books show young readers how their actions can ripple around the world.” So with Earth Day fast approaching and the latest Blueberry Awards about to be announced, I thought getting Patricia and Martha into conversation on this topic of climate anxiety would be well worth a read. I was not disappointed.

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Betsy Bird: Martha, to kick us off, tell us a little bit about why you started the Blueberry Award and what its initial purpose was. Has anything significantly changed since its inception for you?

Martha Meyer: The Evanston Public Library, just after the Covid shutdown, started the Blueberry Award to raise up great nature & climate books often missed by the official library awards, for parents and teachers who want to support young climate citizens. I also wanted to honor those writers and illustrators who feel called to help children understand and love the earth, like Patricia Newman!

A significant change in approach came by learning from psychological researchers about kids’ climate anxiety and how to prevent it or mitigate it. I heard an online lecture in early 2023 from Lois Chalwa, Professor Emerita of University of Colorado, Boulder, and a member of the Children and Nature Network’s Scientific Advisory Council. Reading more of her research led me to adjust how the committee approaches and talks about book selection for the Blueberry Awards. 

Climate anxiety is a combination of frustration, fear, and helplessness created when you feel responsibility for but no authority to act on climate change and/or biodiversity losses. Climate anxiety in teens is no longer regarded as a disorder because the majority of teens experience it. Research shows how to avoid climate anxiety in kids, but the recommended approach would help all of us to reset. Telling our children that the world is in deep trouble, and it is all up to you and your generation to fix it, immediately provokes climate anxiety. Besides, it is untrue. Mitigating climate change is everyone’s responsibility and large organisations (governments, corporations, non-profits) have more responsibility than private citizens. Also, the adults are already engaged and working toward a better future than the one climate scientists are predicting. Acting together in a group is an antidote to climate anxiety. So is finding delight in the wonder and beauty of nature. The best practice is to use the tone of inviting kids to join the coolest group project! A lot of good work is happening right now. However, as Katherine Hayhoe recently wrote, the reporting on that good work gets drowned out because of algorithms that promote dire headlines that generate the most clicks. 

I started to notice kids’ books pushing fear and guilt (“Won’t you be sad when it is all gone?”) around the topic of climate change, but didn’t understand why I couldn’t connect with those earnest but dour books. Immediately after Dr. Chawla’s lecture, however, I could see it and was truly surprised! There is great research clarity out there; if authors and illustrators aren’t aware of it, can’t their editors guide them to a better approach? We need engaged, climate-literate citizens, not people anxious and avoidant! 

BB: Before we go any further, Patricia I’d love to speak to you and get a bit more background on why you make the books that you do. As a nonfiction author for kids, you could touch on all kinds of different topics. What draws you to create so many with ties to our impact on the environment and the world?

Patricia Newman: I was an outdoor kid, Betsy. I gardened, fished, body surfed, sailed, swam, jumped in piles of leaves—anything I could do to be outside. I had the confidence of youth, too. Nothing was impossible.

Then in fifth grade bullies changed everything. Suddenly I had no voice, no friends, no confidence. Nothing seemed possible. I’m happy to report that I survived and found both my voice and my confidence again, but the experience changed me.

I developed a well-honed sense of justice which draws me to the environmental stories I choose to write about. I take pride in speaking up for animals and ecosystems that have no voice.  

BB: And Patricia, as an author of books that both explain the dire state that our world is in, how do you avoid the climate anxiety that Martha has described so well?

Patricia: I believe the “state of the world” is more than any of us can handle at one time and climate anxiety comes straight from this over-arching view. Additionally, media headlines focus on the mess our politicians are making of our national environmental policy rather than the hope. Why? According to a 2023 study, “negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates).”

Instead, my books, school visits, and conference presentations Teach the Hope by focusing on the things we can control. I help audiences understand their personal connections to nature in relation to environmental issues. Sure, I cover problems like plastic marine debris, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and endangered species, but I’m not sensationalizing them. I use science to make invisible concepts visible in a way that empowers rather than paralyzes.

As understanding dawns, my audiences begin to appreciate the significant role we humans play in the health of our environment. This appreciation creates a bond between us and nature—a bond that I’m betting will cause them to feel grateful for the gifts nature bestows on us.

Gratitude then empowers us to brainstorm solutions. My books show people modeling solutions to better their communities. Each solution began with an appreciation of and gratitude for nature.

Within your family, library, or classroom, solutions must be well-defined within narrow parameters. We can’t do it all. We do what we can, celebrate our successes, and tap into gratitude to focus on the hope. (For more on gratitude, read an article I wrote for PLOS SciComm.)

BB: Let’s focus on that hope. Martha, to your mind, how can a book balance the authenticity of the state of the world today alongside hope for the future? And can you name some books that come immediately to mind as successful in this regard? 

Martha: Let’s roughly divide the children’s audience into under age 8 and over age 8. A book generally shouldn’t share the authenticity of the state of the world for kids under 8. Feel free to share how to plant natives to help the birds eat and feed their young. Share how to help fish swim in clean waters so they can be healthy. Share how trees help cool the city. Share how busy cars hurt the air quality in your town, so we can ride our bikes. But global climate change information or the dramatic apocalypse in insect and native bird and other wild populations should be saved for kids in upper elementary school and above. The best way to move kids under 8 into climate citizenship is to help them fall in love with the earth and its creatures. Wonder is the ticket.

Authors should share the true state of the earth with upper elementary and middle school kids while also sharing all the terrific work being done to mitigate it–all the ingenious scientists working, all the cool new ideas being implemented, all the ways humans are saving species, and all the marvelous indigenous knowledge about how to maintain healthy ecosystems. Issue a gentle invitation to join us in this great work!  However, kids this age also need to hear all the glorious new science of the earth and its creatures we are discovering AND the rarely taught skills to access nature for calm, rejuvenation, and peace, so that, as activists, they can move forward with love and determination. We all need to hear that.

Blueberry books that share the state of the earth while presenting clear action on its behalf include the Naomi Klein/Rebecca Stefoff collaboration, How to Change Everything: A Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Planet and Each Other; Alison Levy’s Breaking the Mold: Changing the Face of Climate Science; the incredible dark humor in Stacy McNulty’s Save the People: Halting Human Extinction. A simpler book for younger kids is Your Planet Needs You! An Optimistic Guide to Walloping Waste and Reducing Rubbish by the incomparable Philip Bunting. Two excellent books in contention for the 2024 Blueberry are Sustainable Structures: 15 Eco-Conscious Buildings Around the World by Kate McMillan and Taking Care of Where We Live: Restoring Ecosystems by Merrie-Ellen Wilcox illustrated by Amanda Key. Check out Betsy’s column on March 21st to see if they get included in the 2024 Blueberry Awards!

BB: Aw. Thanks, Martha. And Patricia, let’s talk about this “hope”. I don’t need to tell you that for a lot of us, we’re in short supply of it these days. Yet for books for kids, hope is a necessity. How do you incorporate it into the books that you write? 

Patricia: The people in my books aren’t there by accident—they are the hope because they serve as civic role models for us. Frequently, they began alone with little to no money. Many of them were young. All were blazing a trail through unchartered territory. And they toil in relative obscurity. But they all respect their connections to nature. For example:

• In Giant Rays of Hope (Millbrook Press, 2024), Kerstin Forsberg helps youth develop their own environmental projects based on problems they identify and want to solve. Additionally, Kerstin and her techie partners developed a phone app that allows fishers to mark the location of a manta ray sighting so other fishers can avoid it, saving their fishing nets and the manta!
• In A River’s Gifts (Millbrook Press, 2023), the Strong People of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula collaborated with the wider community, a national park, and the government to restore the Elwha River and the salmon fishery upon which their culture, spirituality, and livelihood rely.
• In Planet Ocean (Millbrook Press, 2021), Iñupiat teen Eben Hopson makes films showcasing native people and how climate change affects their hometown of Barrow, Alaska. And Helen Pananggung and the kids of Pintu Kota Kecil, Indonesia clean their beach of plastic that washes in on the tide twice a day and recycle it at the community Trash Bank.

Remember the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead who once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

BB: Along the same lines, Martha, what does hope mean to you when we talk about books that appreciate nature? What does it look like on the page? 

Martha: This Gerard Manley Hopkins quote, “And for all this, nature is never spent; there lives the dearest freshness deep down things,” guides me in selecting nature books. In what ways are we being surprised and delighted by our new discoveries of nature? How is nature regenerating given half a chance? How are animals adapting to new sites and circumstances?

BB: And Patricia, on a personal level, what gives YOU hope these days?

Patricia: I see hope everywhere!

Betsy and Martha, you’re the hope for raising awareness with this discussion and sponsoring the Blueberry Award.

Zoos and aquariums educate us about how they are helping specific species facing habitat loss, overhunting/fishing, and human/wildlife conflicts.

Cafeteria Culture helps schools use their lunchrooms as hubs of student action to decrease food waste and plastic pollution.

Approximately 1,700 students and teachers in Texas tuned into my tenth anniversary celebration for Plastic, Ahoy!  with enthusiasm for making a difference.

Librarians and teachers sponsor school-based Green Teams or Blue Crews to spread awareness and empower students to act.

Individual children like Gabriella (age 10) and Francesca (age 8) saw tons of plastic on a beach during their vacation. They read Plastic, Ahoy! and created a presentation about changes their family could make.

Many new eco-friendly products are now available to buy, from toothpaste to clothing.

Publishers like Millbrook Press/Lerner continue to publish hopeful environmental stories like mine. A few favorites include Stand as Tall as the Trees by Patricia Gualinga, Laura Resau and Vanessa Jaramillo (2023), Dear Earth…From Your Friends in Room 5 by Erin Dealey and Luisa Uribe (2020) and Follow the Moon Home by Philipp Cousteau (2016).

Hope is everywhere. We must learn to recognize, reward it, and be inspired by it.                                             

BB: Beautifully said. Finally, Martha, what are you hoping to see more of in children’s books about the environment and nature in the future?

• Humor! Nothing goes down better. 
• I also would love to see kids’ book authors learn about the critical work of ecosystem restoration before developing the plot. We have eliminated from consideration lots of gorgeous fiction and nonfiction books that feature plants not native to the area, and that talk about helping birds AFTER they’ve crashed into windows, and that show cats outside, happily looking for native birds to kill. 
• May there be more books about how to include indigenous and local people in decision making around climate change mitigation and rewilding, like Giant Rays of Hope, Patricia’s new book! 
• May there be more books about diverse peoples, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folks, working in all parts of the world toward a better climate future.

BB: I couldn’t agree more. And Patricia? What do you have coming out next? What’s new for you?

Patricia: Thanks for asking, Betsy! I’m excited to introduce readers to a new nonfiction picture book called Sharks Unhooked: The Adventures of Cristina Zenato, Underwater Ranger (April 1, Millbrook Press).

Some people are afraid of sharks. Not Cristina. She has a special relationship with them that draws them to her and allows her to remove fishing hooks stuck in their fins, gills, and even their mouths. Becca Hall’s beautiful illustrations give life to Cristina’s dramatic and daring shark rescue story.

Cristina is the hope, too. She saw a problem and decided to do something about it. And now it resonates with people around the world!

Here’s the trailer:

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That is excellent!

Well, special thanks to both Martha and Patricia for joining me in conversation today. For more on this topic, please check out the recent American Libraries feature on Martha and the Blueberry, Nurturing Nature: Book award recognizes titles that help kids grow as climate citizens. And, of course, Patricia’s latest title, Sharks Unhooked.

Filed under: Conversations