Excellent Sci-Fi and Non-Fiction Reads in Honor of Earth Day

It\’s almost April! And do you know what that means?

It means that Earth Day is coming.

Earth Day is held each year on April 22. The yearly event officially started in 1970 and has spread around the world. The idea behind it is to raise awareness about the environmental protection of the planet we call home. Putting a focus on the state of the environment has never been more critical, and it\’s something that people of all ages can do. Those looking for good reading material will enjoy the below list of books with a fiction/Sci-Fi edge that provides entertainment while also sharing an insight into our planet\’s environment.

The best way to combat the issues plaguing our planet is to learn about them, take action, and share the information with others. The more people that get on board with helping to protect the environment, the better the planet will be.

Non-Fiction

A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis by Vanessa Nakate

Leading climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate brings her fierce, fearless spirit, new perspective, and superstar bona fides to the biggest issue of our time. In A Bigger Picture, her first book, she shares her story as a young Ugandan woman who sees that her community bears disproportionate consequences to the climate crisis. At the same time, she sees that activists from African nations and the global south are not being heard in the same way as activists from white nations are heard. Inspired by Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, in 2019 Nakate became Uganda’s first Fridays for Future protestor, awakening to her personal power and summoning within herself a commanding political voice.

Nakate’s mere presence has revealed rampant inequalities within the climate justice movement. In January 2020, while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as one of five international delegates, including Thunberg, Nakate’s image was cropped out of a photo by the Associated Press. The photo featured the four other activists, who were all white. It highlighted the call Nakate has been making all along: for both environmental and social justice on behalf of those who have been omitted from the climate discussion and who are now demanding to be heard.

From a shy little girl in Kampala to a leader on the world stage, A Bigger Picture is part rousing manifesto and part poignant memoir, and it presents a new vision for the climate movement based on resilience, sustainability, and genuine equity.

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times (Celadon Books, October 2021) by Jane Goodall

An icon in the conservation movement, Goodall offers a look at pressing environmental issues and hopes for making positive changes. Looking at the headlines—the worsening climate crisis, a global pandemic, loss of biodiversity, political upheaval—it can be hard to feel optimistic. And yet hope has never been more desperately needed.

In this urgent book, Jane Goodall, the world\’s most famous living naturalist, and Douglas Abrams, the internationally bestselling co-author of The Book of Joy, explore through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. In The Book of Hope, Jane focuses on her \”Four Reasons for Hope\”: The Amazing Human Intellect, The Resilience of Nature, The Power of Young People, and The Indomitable Human Spirit.

Drawing on decades of work that has helped expand our understanding of what it means to be human and what we all need to do to help build a better world, The Book of Hope touches on vital questions, including: How do we stay hopeful when everything seems hopeless? How do we cultivate hope in our children? What is the relationship between hope and action? Filled with moving and inspirational stories and photographs from Jane’s remarkable career, The Book of Hope is a deeply personal conversation with one of the most beloved figures in the world today.

While discussing the experiences that shaped her discoveries and beliefs, Jane tells the story of how she became a messenger of hope, from living through World War II to her years in Gombe to realizing she had to leave the forest to travel the world in her role as an advocate for environmental justice. And for the first time, she shares her profound revelations about her next, and perhaps final, adventure.

The second book in the Global Icons Series—which launched with the instant classic The Book of Joy with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu—The Book of Hope is a rare and intimate look not only at the nature of hope but also into the heart and mind of a woman who revolutionized how we view the world around us and has spent a lifetime fighting for our future.

There is still hope, and this book will help guide us to it.

Fiction

Mandalay Hawk\’s Dilemma by Peter Aronsen

Who better to compel young climate activists to spring into action against global warming than a rebellious, troublemaking teen with bright orange hair?

Readers are transported to the year 2030, and global warming is worse than scientists predicted. Climate protests have fizzled, and the world is on fire — all because adults didn\’t want change badly enough. Mandalay\’s family flees Maine after yet another one of Mandalay\’s destructive protests and is greeted in Manhattan by palm trees and a rising Atlantic that threatens to swallow New York City.

Mandalay and her pals start KRAAP — Kids Revolt Against Adult Power. They battle their parents, a principal and a government (and president) that wants to silence and stop them. They do things the old fashioned way: they study their brains out and ditch social media. There\’s a march on Washington unlike any other and then there\’s rapping in the Oval Office to a captive president. The kids aren\’t leaving until they get what they want.

Mandalay Hawk\’s Dilemma is a primer of sorts for young climate activists, infused with real science and history regarding global warming. At its core, it\’s an adventure story filled with teen angst and youthful indignance that ultimately serves as a love story for Mother Earth and a call-to-action for younger generations.

In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews calls the book: \”A scathing work and an essential blueprint for youth battling climate change.\”

Dry (Markosia Enterprises, October 2021) by Stephon Stewart

The world has become waterless due to Solar Flares and the Runaway Greenhouse Effect. Earth has not experienced rain for eons. A farmer and daughter wander across a transformed planet, in dire hopes of finding an underground water source.

The sci-fi fantasy graphic novel has a mission of showing readers what the planet will be like if we don\’t change our environmental habits now. Such changes are necessary to address global warming because scientists predict that it will lead to heat waves, hurricanes, weather extremes, shrinking ice caps, rising sea levels, warming of the ocean, and ocean acidification. See how the story ends and read the 186-page adventure story for yourself. \”Dry\” is out everywhere now and available worldwide at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and markosia.com/dry/.

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