Think Like a Forest

Letters to my Children from a Changing Planet

How do we raise children in a climate emergency?

What should we teach them - and what kind of future are we preparing them for?


Ben Rawlence began writing to his eldest daughter before she was born, trying to understand what it means to bring a child into a world facing ecological breakdown. Over the next twelve years, these letters – written to his two daughters as they grow – chart one father’s attempt to live with the central contradiction of our age: raising children within a system that threatens all life, including our own.

By turns moving and funny, and always bracingly honest, Think Like a Forest explores love, fear and responsibility in perilous times. Rawlence finds the answers might lie in learning to see the world again through the eyes of a child so that we may embrace interdependence and regain our place in nature. To think like a forest, he shows us, may be the key to how we parent, how we live, and even whether we have a future on our planet at all.

Climate change is an intergenerational issue: an existential crisis we are bequeathing to our descendants. Ben Rawlence's letters to his daughters grapple with questions of injustice and adaptation - but also celebrate the joy and hope and wonder of small children. Beautiful and thought-provoking

Cal Flyn

About Ben Rawlence

Ben Rawlence is the author of The Treeline, City of Thorns and Radio Congo. Rawlence has written for the Guardian, London Review of Books, New York Times, New York Times Book Review, New Yorker and many other publications. He lives in Wales and is the founder and director of Black Mountains College, an institution dedicated to preparing people for the changes to come.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • ISBN: 9781529939002
  • Length: 240 pages
  • Price: £9.99
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