A Green Call to Arms
by Nathalie op de Beeck, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 8/2/2007 12:00:00 PM
“Did you see the article in this morning’s New York Times?,” climate change activist Laurie David asks, the moment she picks up the phone. She means a front-page piece on global warming in the northeastern U.S., but she could be referring to any day’s headlines. David views every climate report as an unconditional call to action, for all ages. “We’re looking at some other severe weather [event] every year,” she says. “Politicians like Charlie Crist in Florida are now making big statements and trying to lead the way” on sustainable energy use.
David, the producer of the Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth and the HBO documentary Too Hot Not to Handle, brings her environmental message to young readers this fall. With her coauthor and friend Cambria Gordon, David has completed The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming (Scholastic/Orchard, Sept.). Through timely data and memorable metaphors, the Guide describes climate crisis and suggests real ways children can make a difference. The authors will promote their Guide on the Today Show on September 19.
“This book is graphically exciting, hip and young, and it gives kids a ton of information on every page without kids realizing they’re getting the information,” David says. “It’s a fun book to read on global warming,” she adds, admitting the dissonance of the phrase but emphasizing that she and Gordon balance humor and seriousness. (Illustrator Stephen Schudlich created the cartoons, charts and graphs, and the Scholastic design team complemented his drawings with photographs.)
Gordon, a former advertising copywriter, explains that she and David looked for “analogies and ways a kid could get into the scientific facts.” For instance, a chapter on deforestation compares human baldness with clear-cut forests, then explains how the destruction of forests means higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere: “In the case of forests,” they write, “bald is definitely not beautiful.”
 Co-authors Cambria Gordon and Laurie David. Photo: Stacie Isabella Turk |
Both David and Gordon see children as true agents for change. “Kids are the most optimistic human beings—they only see the future ahead of them and it’s bright,” David says. “Kids also are the number one influence on their parents, so if you want to reach the parents, go to the kids.”
Gordon agrees, “At times the adult world is getting burnt out,” coping with existing crises and forecasts for disaster. But “children’s concern is for their adult life—they don’t have the cynicism adults have.” Gordon foresees children reading the Guide in eco-clubs and after-school programs, using it as a basis for classroom projects and fund-raisers, and checking its advice on green habits.
Bringing the Book to Press
Last August, Orchard senior editor Lisa Sandell negotiated the book deal with Jennifer Jaeger of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. David and Gordon pressed for a revved-up production schedule, owing to the urgency of their topic. “Every single person who works on this issue—including scientists—says we can do it, but we have to do it now,” David says. “We can solve this thing if we do something now.”
Sandell also attests to the need for speed. “We had the book read and vetted many many times so it remained current,” she says. “They kept feeding us new bits of information, and the manuscript remained pretty fluid.” Only as the Guide went to press did Gordon and David finalize their authors’ note, which describes the movement against plastic shopping bags, recent corporate attention to carbon dioxide emissions, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition of CO2 and other pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
“It’s fact-checked to an inch of its life,” David says. “New things are happening all the time, but the core information stays pretty much the same, so if we update it for every round we can stay current.” For example, the first edition of the Guide points out California’s pledge to reduce state carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. Further developments can be tracked on the Guide’s Web site and on media outlets like Nickelodeon, Radio Disney or classrooms’ Channel One.
Sandell explains that young readers appreciate hard facts and up-to-date anecdotes. “Kids are often attracted to numbers, because it makes an idea tangible and relatable,” she says. “If you say, ‘X number water bottles are thrown away every hour,’ that’s a number they can understand.” (A pre-press galley of the Guide notes, “Americans buy more than 25 billion single water bottles a year, and 80% get thrown away or become litter.”)
“The concept of what is happening is very scary,” Sandell continues, “but one of the strengths of the book is that it doesn’t focus on scaring the reader. It’s a text that encourages the reader to take action: Don’t use water bottles! Use a glass, use a travel mug. Kids can often be the arbiters of change. They can come back to their parents and ask, ‘Why don’t you have an EnergyStar appliance?’ ”
Sandell notes that, since editing the Guide, she recycles diligently, carries a canvas shopping bag, installs compact fluorescent lightbulbs and uses a mug at work. “It’s so easy to take these steps—it has really been a wakeup call,” she says.
The environmentalist authors have altered some of their habits too. Besides recycling, composting and using canvas shopping bags, Gordon says, “I’m forceful with having my kids unplug their chargers, and I’ve changed all our computers not to have screen savers.” No one is perfect, she allows: “I still have a large house, and people still drive to my house to work there.” She has installed solar panels for the pool and water heater, and she cuts down on paper-wasting junk mail at www.41pounds.org.
David also has installed solar panels (“It’s so amazing for a multitasker to think, ‘Wow, even when I’m out, I’m making electricity!’,” she jokes). She avoids paper coffee filters, uses “bulk rather than bottled water,” and washes clothes in cold water (“What an unbelievable savings in carbon emissions!”).
In its production, the Guide itself demonstrates publishing industry changes. Two other companies bid for the book in addition to Scholastic, leaving David and Gordon in a position to bargain for optimal sustainability. “In our initial contract negotiation, we required that it be printed on recycled paper,” Gordon says. “Scholastic took it further,” teaming with Rainforest Alliance to improve the company’s production processes. Last January, Scholastic released a statement of its commitment to responsible environmental stewardship and to improving paper procurement practices. The company now uses Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified papers and papers with post-consumer waste (PCW) fiber for some of its titles. The finished Guide is a paperback original, and therefore more recyclable. Its 100% PCW interior pages and 10% PCW cover are FSC-certified and printed in soy ink.
“Because the book is about environmental stewardship and care, we wanted to make sure it was produced in an environmentally sound way,” Sandell explains. “For [David and Gordon], the percentage of consumer waste fiber in the stock was integral. We knew it would cost more to use paper with a higher PCW content, but we put our money where our mouths are.”
David, who guest-edited the May 2006 and 2007 green issues of Elle magazine, has long been an advocate of sustainable resources in print media. “[Scholastic] said, ‘We’re going to do everything we can,’ and it has led to company-wide changes,” she says. “You think about how many books are published, and when the Harry Potter books are on [30% PCW] recycled paper, that makes a big difference.”
Asked how other authors can make a similar stand, David is uncompromising. Authors can promote sustainability “by demanding it, by saying, ‘This as important as whatever advance you give me, it’s as important as your marketing campaign,’ ” she insists. “The same thing is happening in the music industry, so I know it can be done. People say, ‘John Mayer is doing it,’ or ‘The Dave Matthews Band is using [green] packaging, so I can too.’ ”
“It becomes second nature,” she concludes. “This is the shift that has to happen.”
