Healing Landscapes and Grieving Eco-Warriors: Climate Activism in Children’s Literature

Abstract Children, we are told, are becoming more anxious. But what are they anxious about? Recent studies on “climate anxiety” suggest that the current climate crisis is at the top of children and young people’s concerns and is being expressed in the form of grief. This essay considers a growing body of climate fiction for children that links personal grief to planetary grief as a way of developing children’s ecological consciousness and putting them on the path towards climate activism. It examines Sarah Baughman’s The Light in the Lake (2019) while tracing the historical and literary roots of this trend in literature for the young. Drawing on research in the interdisciplinary field of ecopsychology, the author argues that children’s authors are increasingly drawing on tropes of ecological fiction in order to respond to the current climate crisis and offer young readers models of activism that will address this major global issue.