How to talk to primary-age children about climate change
ONCE, THE biggest science challenge for parents of primary-school children was answering the question: “why is the sky blue?”. Now it’s more likely to be “What’s climate change?”. How are you supposed to answer that? Science explainer extraordinaire, Dr Emily Grossman can help. Her fun book Brain-Fizzing Facts has already answered a host of intriguing science questions and was shortlisted for the Teach Primary Book Awards. She had always wanted to write a follow-up — and in the meantime has become involved as an activist, to try to help people understand the impact of climate change.
“My climate work led me initially to write a free online guide to explain the climate and ecological crisis to adults and older teenagers — Emergency on Planet Earth, published about a year ago,” she says. Now, with World-Whizzing Facts, she explains climate change and wildlife loss to primary-school-age kids and gives them clear, specific ideas of what they can do to help. The book is informal and upbeat and, along with the worldwhizzing scientific seriousness, there are jokes, truly astonishing revelations about wee and poo, wonderfully curious extras such as how much a cloud weighs (expressed as a number of African elephants) and where to go to find rain made of diamonds — along with lively illustrations by Alice Bowsher.
“In this book I really wanted to help young people understand the harsh realities about what’s going on on our planet, but in a way that’s inspiring and brings hope, and lets them know how they can help,” says Grossman. “One of the takeaways is about being happy with what we’ve got. What’s really important right now is that we start to appreciate the simple things in life, the things that bring us joy — spending time in nature, with people we love, pets, friends — rather than needing endless amounts of new stuff and fancy holidays. It’s also about being kind to one another, and working together to build a future that’s not just good for us but good for all the creatures we share our planet with.”
The climate-change facts are relayed in succinct, simple language that is even more condensed and easy to follow than her online guide — but still stays true to science. “Everything I wrote I got rigorously fact checked by climate scientists and ecologists,” says Grossman — she also consulted an educational psychologist because, although she has worked as a teacher and has given hundreds of school talks, she wanted to ensure potentially scary information was delivered
I wanted to give kids an explanation of ways they can help ’
sensitively and age-appropriately.
“I wanted to tell kids the truth, to go on that journey with them to support them, to offer them reassurance, hope and inspiration, and to give them an explanation of ways they can help. I wanted to let them know that whatever it is they might be feeling — fear/ anger/confusion/frustration — it’s valid, it’s understandable, it’s appropriate and that’s OK. It’s only through knowledge that we can start to move through those scary, difficult feelings and turn them into ways to empower ourselves.”
She is passionately confident that small people can make a big difference. As well as citing Greta Thunberg, she quotes the Dalai Lama: “if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito” and Gandhi “the difference between what we do and what we’re capable of doing would suffice to solve the world’s problems.” This also aligns with the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world.
Grossman recently moved to Devon and will spend Rosh Hashanah there with her partner Kimwei and their cats “and the Jewish community in Totnes — they’re lovely! I will be praying for a new year in which we can increasingly move away from fossil fuels and intensive agriculture, towards green energy and more sustainable farming methods. A year in which we can allow nature to regenerate and start to repair the terrible damage that we’ve done to our planet.”