HAZARDOUS HABITATS & ENDANGERED ANIMALS

Human actions have damaged animal habitats; what can we do to avoid another mass extinction?

Experts on talking about climate change, especially with young people, emphasize making personal connections, staying hopeful, and focusing on solutions. This British import does just the reverse. It’s a litany of examples of the ways the natural world is changing. Prolific nature writer de la Bédoyère has had plenty of experience presenting animal facts to young readers, but in this case, the sad, scary examples far outnumber the hopeful ones. Her opening chapter introduces the concepts of animal habitats, overpopulation, climate change, pollution, and mass-extinction events. “We haven’t cared enough about the harm we’ve been doing” to animal homes, she writes. Subsequent chapters are organized by habitats: forests, grasslands, oceans, and mountains and poles (dealt with together). Within each chapter each spread serves as a subsection: open oceans, coasts, coral reefs, the ocean floor, and plastic pollution in the marine section, for example. The text, barely more than infobits, is set in boxes decorated with photographs which themselves are set on larger photographs. There are also charts and maps, more boxes with useful suggestions for “What You Can Do,” and quizzes with choices that are “Totally True or Foolishly False?” (Answers in the back of the book.)

Advice for what the author has called “the Greta generation” but no answers.