Using Picture Books to Mitigate Climate Anxiety

     I wrote a picture book manuscript as LA burned.  When the fire broke out on January 7, it had been a wonderfully blustery day due to the Santa Ana winds.  I spent the morning with my kindergarten students, flying kites.  Children chasing and laughing.  Pure joy.  

Then, on a dime it changed.  By lunchtime, the principal called us all back into our classrooms.  As it turned out we were 3.7 miles from the evacuation line.  We watched helplessly as the smoke plumes rose from the nearby mountains, then continued to burn for days.                          

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      Our community experienced trauma.  After the fires were extinguished, students from an affected school began enrolling in our school.  The students arrived in my classroom and school confused, unstable, and affected.  Their entire school community had been torn apart. We welcomed them into our community paying special attention to the fact that they were most likely experiencing trauma and most importantly needed a community and sense of belonging.       As a class, we gave them a place to belong.

      I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who lost their home in one of the two fires that burned simultaneously. Both UCLA and Yale University have noted that climate change contributed to the conditions that fueled the fires.  And yet, we don’t talk about it.  I suspect climate anxiety plays a big part.  And so, as a kindergarten teacher and kidlit author, I believe that we must be the ones to start the conversation.  This last post from me explores Using Picture Books to Mitigate Climate Anxiety. 

     I have the deepest respect for children and believe that they are capable, curious, and creative thinkers.  I worry that as adults, our own climate anxiety prevents us from having open and honest conversations with them about this growing existential threat.  Not having these conversations will not make the problem go away.  So, how can we push through our own anxiety to engage our young people in discourse that can mitigate their anxiety and support their capacity to engage in climate activism.  How can we lead by example?  I believe picture books are a valid portal to enter past our own resistance. As kidlit authors, we can write stories that lead children past the fear of the adults around them and into discourse that can leads them to be changemakers. 

I like to read stories to my kindergarten students to provoke discourse.  I don’t care what their conclusions are.  I just want them to connect and engage. I find that stories, rather than affirmation books or books where adults tell children how and what to think keep my students riveted.  

     Stories and experiences in nature help students build relationships with the outdoors which I believe builds the conditions for conservation to emerge.  We can’t expect children to want to push beyond climate anxiety through to climate activism if they have no reason to. 

     I often begin with picture books like Sea Bear written and illustrated by Lindsay Moore about a lone polar bear’s journey across sea ice in the Arctic, The Octopus Escapes written by Maile Meloy and illustrated by Felicita Sala about an octopus who escapes from an aquarium and returns back to its natural home, and my picture book Hello, Little One: A Monarch Butterfly Story illustrated by Fiona Halliday about a fictional intergenerational friendship between a monarch caterpillar and a monarch butterfly.

     As I’ve written in my previous blog it’s important that stories are not only told through the lens of the white dominant culture (which often include animal stories) but rather offer multiple perspectives from diverse protagonists. I include Fatima’s Great Outdoors about a family's first camping trip written by Ambreen Tariq illustrated by Stevie Lewis and We Are Water Protectors about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests written by Carole Lindstrom illustrated by Michaela Goade.  I lean heaviest on No World Too Big edited by Lindsay H. Metcalf, Keila V. Dawson and Jeanette Bradley illustrated by Jeanette Bradley with non-fiction stories about youth climate activists.

     As picture book authors, we are tasked with the opportunity to move beyond our own climate anxiety and support our youth with the picture books we write.  Our children need your books as they make their way in a world where climate change is impacting where we live in different ways.  Our books can help children make sense of their world and move beyond their  anxiety to better cope with our changing world. Our books can make a difference. We owe it to this next generation.

By Zeena M. Pliska

     Zeena M. Pliska spends her days immersed in the joy of 5-year-olds.  She is a public school kindergarten teacher by day and a children’s book author by night in Los Angeles, California.  A progressive public-school educator, she believes that the most important aspect of teaching is listening to children. A social justice activist and organizer for over 30 years, she brings race, class, and gender analysis to everything she does.  She is half Egyptian and half Filipino.  A lifetime storyteller, she has facilitated stories as a theater director, visual artist, photographer and journalist and most recently as a short film screenwriter/producer/director.   Her debut picture book, Hello, Little One:  A Monarch Butterfly Story from Page Street Kids came out May 12, 2020.  Her second picture book Egyptian Lullaby from Roaring Brook Press came out April 18, 2023. Two board books in the Chicken Soup for Babies series from Charlesbridge came out in the fall and winter of 2023.  Egyptian Lullaby was awarded the 2024 CABA award from Howard University.

     Her blog posts can be found at  www.teachingauthors.com and on social media, Instagram @zeenamar, X (formerly Twitter) @zeenamar1013, Bluesky @zeenamar, and on Facebook @Zeena M. Pliska or Zeena Mar.  For more information you can go to www.zeenamar.