We grew up watching the world end – at least on-screen. Our children are growing up watching it happen in real time. How do we prepare them to inherit a world that's (supposedly) about to end? Today Elizabeth Kirkby-McLeod, an Auckland writer, unpacks climate change literature for children and the responsibilities of those who produce it. In the late 1990s the world was always about to end on screen. An asteroid is coming! Aliens are arriving! A volcano is erupting! But don’t

How to help our children manage their emotions around the climate crisis. It’s a hot topic. Helping our children manage those big feelings can be tricky. It’s hard enough for adults. Navigating these moments in parenting can feel a lot like stumbling in the dark. When I can’t find the words myself, I turn to books. Both for myself and my child. There are books galore on climate science, but hardly any on how to support our children’s emotional response around inheriting a cli

Australia-based New Zealander Bren MacDibble has been a published writer for many years, but only recently broke into the trade children's publishing market. Last year, she won both the Young Adult and the Junior Fiction Awards at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, under her two writing names, for In the Dark Spaces and How to Bee. Gerri Judkins met her while she was in NZ, and here asks her more about her new junior fiction novel, The Dog Runner. Photographs s

The only thing these two books have in common is that they are absolutely stunning, and they are broadly for a junior fiction age range. The Dog Runner, by Bren MacDibble, is another well-told ecological story; while Jillion is a journal of writing by talented kids aged 5-13. Sarah Forster recommends them both. The Dog Runner, by Bren MacDibble ‘I saw on the news, before they stopped the TV stations, that there’s no grass anywhere in the whole world no more. No rice in Asia e