Getting down with doggerel and prose

Where can kids go to unlearn the media spin and subterfuge on the topic of climate change? Polar bears dressed like Barney playing banjos and singing about “no more ice, got some blues … gotta get outta here before the Ice Man cometh?” How do parents talk to elementary school younglings about salmon going extinct and rivers going dry? Who can help school-aged citizens when budgets are being cut by lawmakers who mock science and fight government oversight? One woman’s globe is another man’s flat earth, that’s the new motto in some state legislatures. It’s a mad, mad world of books about climate change, and people need help sorting it all out, quickly, before the globe hits those tipping points. Kids won’t be asked to read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” or Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature” until college, and even then, the quantity of books focusing on the environment and how to unravel the issues around global warming and humanity’s connection to its underpinning is daunting. One major clearinghouse for climate change education materials, climatechangeeducation.org, tries to put wind in the sails for educators to get a handle on what to give their students. This in a time of continued scrutiny from young earth believers on school boards who yammer on about the earth’s maximum age being 8,000 years, give or take a few thousand. These are bizarre times with bizarre curriculum committees that see anything ‘climate change’ as a political hot potato. It’s a time when creationists drive school policy, but geologists teach that it takes 8,000 years to form one inch of limestone. Where can we turn for climate change literary assistance? The Grinning Planet, Grist and Tree Hugger have columns and review areas to aid adults in navigating this front – books like “Peak Everything”; “Heat”; “Goodbye, My Subaru”; “The Suicidal Planet” might lend some pause in the cocktail party conversation. So let’s get back to kids, 8 years and up. I cracked open the book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” in a game/gag store in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. It has colorful cartoons mixed with photographs and illustrations. There’s a drawing of the water cycle and a sun with a Wal-Mart lobotomized stare, the cloud looks like an ADHD child hooked on Ritalin and raindrops look like Hanford Reach blue spermatozoa. Written by Laurie David, impresario for Al Gore’s Power Point thing, “An Inconvenient Truth?” and an L.A. advertising copywriter-turned-children’s book writer, Cambria Gordon, “Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming” is a hodgepodge of four sections – “It’s Getting Hot in Here”; “Weird, Wacky Weather” ; ”Extinction Stinks”; and “What You Can Do to Stop Global Warming.” Is this book the comprehensive resource for 8-12 year olds to understand global warming? Does its message of hope resonate for kids facing far greater issues in their schools and personal and community lives? While the book is stuffed with color, graphics, and a crafty and visually-driven feel, there seem to be big gaps in presentation and content, which is an issue many writers run into when gearing thoughts and content toward the young adult/juvenile reader group. Do we stick with basics, or can we rely on young folks having a bigger grounding in climate change, therefore, allow for more nuancing? There’s just too much covered in a very superficial manner in this book. It’s not something that lends itself to classroom-directed curriculum, and, really, a film like “The Thirteenth Hour” might have a larger impact than this book that wants to be a guide, a resource, and a fun classroom assistant. Instead, the clutter gobbles up the intent. A better concept might be “The Encyclopedia of Climate Change and What Youth are Doing About It – An Interactive and Hands on Guide to Teach Dumb Adults How they Have to Get It!” That’s a better angle, maybe one I’ll begin working on. It’s certainly a worthy cause to come up with a book to draw kids away from XBoxes and music downloads. This book really might assist a third- or fourth-grade teacher in getting climate change in the mix. Maybe “The Down to Earth Guide” should be mandatory reading for parents, who then would be encouraged to go online to find longer articles, which David and Gordon include in a bibliography and also at stopglobalwarming.org. There are other books which we’ll be featuring here at Down to Earth Northwest (no relation.) I’ve read hundreds and skimmed hundreds more. What kills me about this book – “Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming” – and others is that there seems to be an inside clique of climate change “spokespeople” making hay and getting the book contracts. For Laurie, ex-wife of Seinfeld creator Larry David, co-writing a book like this is silly, really. The millionaires club is no place for serious topics like climate change. Co-producing a film about Al’s Power Point is not much of a credential to write a book for kids, but, alas, everything in this country, even staid and dry climate change topics, produces a cult of personality, cult of celebrity mentality. There are many more ways young people can find out how to frame and envelope climate change as a life-long learning process than books by Hollywood millionaires.