Please Don't Paint Our Planet Pink!

"I love, love, love this book. Here’s the elevator pitch: Four years ago, when Kleiner’s daughters were young, he worked with a fabulous illustrator to produce a 44-page children’s picture book – what I call the world’s first cli-fi picture book – about the danger CO2 poses to the planet. Notice the subtitle of the book is “A Story for Children and Their Adults.” So this is not just a book for kids but it’s also for their parents and their teachers to read and discuss with them at home or at school. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The conceit is: what if someone painted all the CO2 in the atmosphere pink, so that everyone could see it, and how it is overloading the atmosphere? Now, no children’s book is going to turn the tide on the fight against global warming impacts alone. But, on the other hand, what if this little book became an animated cartoon that was shared online worldwide and on TV? One never knows how children’s books travel in time. Look at how popular the Dr Seuss picture books became worldwide after the author died. Some literary critics even say that The Lorax was a cli-fi picture book that was way ahead of its time. I have to think that our descendants in 2118 might still be reading Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 , James Bradley’ s Clade , Claire Vaye Watkins’s Gold Fame Citrus , Ling Ma’s Severance and Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow . And for sure, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide."