Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

Never has there been a more perfect time to empower kids to take the lead and educate their grown-ups about climate change. Patricia Daniels, along with illustrator Aaron Blecha, accomplishes just that in this delightful and witty book. It is an amazing idea, even better in its solid implementation!

Featuring a foreword by internationally renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann, the book navigates the science behind climate change in an uplifting, positive manner. Here’s what makes it stand out:

Engaging Approach: Daniels weaves serious questions with humor. Why is Earth special? How do we know about climate change? What causes it? The answers are accessible and engaging.

Fun Facts: From cow burps to panda-shaped solar panels, the book is filled with fascinating tidbits. It’s like a treasure trove of climate-related trivia.

Practical Tools: Crucially, it equips both kids and adults with practical tools to tackle climate change in their everyday lives. We all need to be part of the solution.

Grown-Up Quiz: Yes, there’s a quiz at the end to check if your grown-up has been paying attention. A playful touch that reinforces the message.

Whether you’re 8 or 80, this book is a must-read. Let’s learn, act, and protect our changing planet together! 🌎🌿

Based on my review posted at The Panda's Thumb:

I hope I am not entering my second childhood, but I just read a splendid book aimed at third through seventh graders: How to Teach Grown-Ups about Climate Change. A picture book, no less, written by Patricia Daniels and illustrated by Aaron Blecha, with, importantly, a foreword by Michael Mann, the discoverer of the "hockey stick." I have not been a fifth grader, nor have I had one, in a very long time, but I am going to guess that the material is suitable for that age group, though possibly a bit hard for a third grader.

Someone once told me that if you want to get the attention of a fifth-grader, just say "fart." Sure enough, on page 27, the authors write, "Yuck! I know one big source of methane: cow farts! NOPE! Well, okay, partial credit…."

They explain, though, that cow burps inject a significant amount of methane into the atmosphere, and methane is a very significant greenhouse gas. Fifth-graders will also be interested to know that sea snot is plugging harbors in Turkey.

I am getting ahead of myself, but the book is well illustrated and has a myriad of infographics, many of them headlined IT'S A FACT! These are shown as a cloud emitted by a burping cow. A nice discussion on information, misinformation, and disinformation shows you how your grown-ups can check any claim they think is suspicious: by going to an encyclopedia, a reputable news source, or a scientific authority. They are also advised to ask who paid for the message and what they get out of it. I might have added, trust dot-gov websites more than dot-com and dot-org websites, in that order.

This is a technical book in some sense. It begins by asking whether "your grown-ups" might be clueless. If so, here is what you need to teach them. The book then goes through the history of climate change, explaining that we damned well know that it is human caused. It explains precisely what fossil fuels are and how burning them injects CO2 into the atmosphere. Beginning with Eunice Foote, who predated even John Tyndall, the authors explain how we know that CO2 traps heat. I was surprised that there was no history between Arrhenius and Greta Thunberg. (I was also somewhat dismayed when they called Foote, the woman, "Eunice"; they would never have called Arrhenius "Svante.")

An infographic on how we know it is hot details the different measuring systems that we use to discern the average temperature of the earth. Another infographic shows the hockey stick and explains that the temperature was pretty steady between 1100 CE and the Industrial Revolution, when it began to rise.

Is it too late? No, and boxes shaped like leaves explain WHAT YOU CAN DO in response to various problems. Other boxes, similar to the one we saw about cow farts, respond NOPE! to various misconceptions and explain precisely why they are misconceptions.

The weather now is often "weird," so they coined the term global weirding. Global weirding is responsible for temperatures of 47 °C in northwestern United States and nearby southwestern Canada on the one hand, and 40 °C warmer than normal in Antarctica (the temperature at one station in Antarctica reached 18 °C in 2020, about the same as Los Angeles on that day). Additionally, we are seeing heat waves in cities, droughts and wildfires, and severe hurricanes, all above normal or what was formerly normal. Some plants and animals will survive all this, and some will not.

The authors are optimistic about our own survival and note that we can tackle global weirding in two ways: personal choices and changing the system. They advise you to do both: change to LED light bulbs, tell your grown-ups not to idle their cars, reduce their consumption of meat (in particular, beef), and so on. But also get your grown-ups to work toward changing the system, as by introducing renewable energy sources, including geothermal, and manufacturing electric cars and trucks, for example. I was gratified to see that they are suspicious of carbon sequestration, in part because the oil industry plans to inject CO2 and use it to extract more oil. They likewise take a somewhat dim view of geo-engineering.

Finally, they offer some advice to your grown-ups when they try to influence friends and acquaintances: find things you have in common; do not argue with doctrinaire climate deniers; do not be "doom-y" and make people want to give up; and do not shame people who, for example, eat beef and drive behemoths. All to my mind good advice, provided sometimes that you can bite your tongue hard enough.

The book ends with a quiz that you can give your grown-ups as well as more detail on What You Can Do. It has a good glossary, a good, age-appropriate list of references, and what looks like a good index.


Appendix 1. The book is of course timely, but perhaps moreso because of the roughly simultaneous announcement of a book by Ken Ham and Jessica DeFord, The Truth [sic!] about Climate Change. I have not read this book, but I think all you need to know about it is this sentence written by Ms. DeFord,

"Climate alarmists will not solve the problem of man’s sin by switching to alternative energy or reducing carbon emissions that they believe are caused by human activity."

and Mr. Ham's reminder of Genesis 8:22, which he interprets as a promise. (I guess he does not believe that God helps those who help themselves, because, after all, it is not Biblical.)

Appendix 2 Physicist's last inch. I found two explanations that were possibly misleading and could be caught by a bright seventh grader. First, electrons are not knocked off the solar cell. If they were, they would have nowhere to go, and the cell would become positive and attract them back. Instead, electrons are made free to move within the cell and therefore generate a current (holes too, but never mind; that would be too complicated). Readers of PT may be interested to know, incidentally, that China has built an array of solar cells in the shape of a panda.

Second, the term heat is used imprecisely in the discussion of "how the atmosphere works." Again, a bright seventh grader might notice. Specifically, the "heat" that falls on the earth is mostly visible light. The "heat" that escapes into space is mostly infrared radiation, so they are not the same thing. The atmosphere is more or less transparent to visible light and more or less opaque to infrared radiation. It blocks much of the loss of "heat" by absorbing infrared radiation. That could have been made clear in a sentence or two.

A greenhouse, incidentally, does not work primarily by the greenhouse effect. Rather, it mostly reduces heat loss by convection. It is therefore very different from the atmosphere, but I would not quibble over that point.

This is a great book for introducing climate change to young students. I am going to buy a paper copy for my classroom. This e-galley had a lot of formatting issues, so I am excited to see the actual paper copy. I learned quite a bit reading this, too! It's in an easy to understand format, and the vocabulary words are explained in kid friendly language. This is a great book for all classrooms!

This will be the perfect book to add to a library's collection especially one that works with a lot of homeschool families. I think that this book breaks an intense topic like global warming and makes it easily digestible for kids and the adults in their lives. I love that the way that this book is written kids will be able to read it for themselves and then be able to go and have meaningful conversations with their family members. I look forward to finding more books in this same vain.

“Children can foster climate change concern among their parents.” That was the title of a 2019 paper in Nature Climate Change, one
of a number of studies that provide evidence for the effectiveness of intergenerational climate change education. Patricia Daniels’s How to Teach GrownUps about Climate Change, aimed at readers between 8 and 12 years old, takes the ball and runs with it.

Daniels’s book adeptly uses humor to engage the attention of its readers: black-and-white-and-green cartoons, often featuring talking animals; references to bodily functions (cow farts, cow burps, and—in a bit of a triumph—dinosaur farts); and jokey asides and digressions. Half a dozen attractive infographics on topics such as “Our Climate: A History” and “Mammals, by Biomass” occupy two-page spreads.

The scientific content of the book, presented at a level suitable for the readership, is accurate, as might be expected from a book with a foreword by Michael E. Mann, a distinguished climate scientist and member of NCSE’s board of directors. The history of climate change science is briefly sketched, with Eunice Foote, John Tyndall, and Svante Arrhenius, but there is no discussion of later developments.

Particularly impressive is the treatment of carbon footprints. Kids are invited to consider their own carbon footprints as part of taking action on climate change, but then immediately reminded, “It’s not just individual people who have these footprints. Companies and governments also have carbon footprints ... Don’t let them tell you that it’s just up to you to solve climate change” (page 55).

A gap in the book’s generally admirable treatment of climate action is education. Its readers will be spending the next decade or so of their lives in formal education, so why not discuss what they could do to engage their school communities in taking action on climate change, including supporting efforts to improve curriculum and instruction?

Climate change denial propaganda campaigns aimed at schoolchildren are not new, but in 2023, no fewer than four—from the Heartland Institute, the CO2 Coalition, EverBright Media’s Kids Guides, and PragerU Kids—were in the headlines. How to Teach Grown-Ups about Climate Change is a welcome, and needed, corrective.

There is a quiz at the end of the book for kids to see if their grown up was paying attention, so be warned! Who knew about cow burps?! This book has a really good explanation of what is false information. I found the illustrations to be engaging as well.

I loved this book and loved the way it was written but it was only available in a temporary ARC that was deleted before I could finish it and publicly review it. What I saw was excellent.

We need more books like this! I love the attitude, which is awesome. Kids can influence their grownups because they care about each other. I've seen kids do the same kind of thing when they try to get their loved ones to stop smoking.
In this book, the science of climate change is explained in simple terms with helpful illustrations. There are details about real ways we're already seeing the effects of climate change and what we can expect. Importantly, there are several actions we can take to make things better.
At the end of the book, there are other sources we can look at for more information, including some books and websites geared towards kids. And there are even more ways we can do our part to hold off the effects of climate change.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

Important information about climate change is given in an entertaining and accessible format book. Facts are explained clearly to allow anyone to understand what climate change is, what can be the results if it’s ignored, and things to do about it - both simple and more complex. It is essential that everyone understands climate change, and this book is a vital connection toward making that happen. As an adult, I am grateful to understand more facts about it, and to be better able to explain it to my grandchildren.

This book was extremely informative, but also engaging. I learned a lot as an adult, and I know my students would enjoy this book in our classroom. The graphics and charts were easy to understand, and everything was very well-written. I plan to get a copy of this book for my classroom to use for a science unit.