Our House is on Fire

Greta Thunberg's Call
to Save the Planet

Beach Lane Books
(Simon & Schuster)
(pub. 9.24.2019) 
40 pages

A True Tale with

A Cherry On Top   

A uthor and illustrator:  Jeanette Winter

 
C haracter: Greta Thunberg

O verview: 

"Our climate is changing.

Our planet is warming.

Will we do something to stop it before it's too late?

One brave girl is demanding this - and she is inspiring the world."

T antalizing taste: 
     "Greta is a quiet girl who led a quiet life in the city of Stockholm. Her dog Roxy was her friend.
     'All my life I've been invisible...
     ... the invisible girl in the back who doesn't say anything.'
     In school she felt alone.
   
     Then one day Greta's teacher talked to the class about the climate, about how our planet is getting warmer, about how the polar ice is melting, about how animals' lives are threatened.
    And ours, too.
    That's when Greta's life changed.
    She read for hours and watched film after film about our warming world ...
    Greta became sad thinking about the climate all the time.
    She barely ate or spoke.
    
    'These pictures are stuck in my mind.'
    
    The sad days went on for a long time, each day more unhappy than the next.    
    There might not be a world to live in when she grows up.  
    What use is school without a future?
    What can I do, she wondered.

    Greta decided to go on strike from school - for the climate...

     The quiet girl was invited to speak to important people at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was necessary to speak.

     'I don't want you to be hopeful.
     I want you to panic.
     I want you to feel the fear I feel every day ...
     I want you to act as if the house was on fire.
     Because it is.'"
     

And something more: The back matter explains that "Greta Thunberg was fifteen years old when she first skipped school one Friday to strike for climate change in front of the Swedish Parliament building in Stockholm. Her lone call to action on August 20, 2018, sparked a children's movement that led to Friday school strikes in many countries and culminated in a worldwide Friday march on March 15, 2019." 

    The author and illustrator Jeanette Winters writes: "When I heard her speeches, I felt Greta was speaking for me. And I'm eighty years old."