“I got an idea for a children’s book.”
Marine conservationist Bonnie Lei knows firsthand how climate change affects people and communities. She decided to take that message directly to kids as a way to build empathy for others.
I remember wading through tidepools as a kid in Los Angeles. I was obsessed. I kept bugging my parents with questions they eventually couldn’t answer, so they enrolled me in an oceanography class at the local college when I was in seventh grade.
After college, I did field research in Myanmar, where my grandmother grew up. I saw kids playing in the ocean surrounded by plastic debris, and it hit me, how differently climate change affects people around the world. I got an idea for a children’s book to show kids what it’s like living where climate change is a daily reality.
The book, The Adventures of Tuya and Noyon, lets kids choose their own adventures to learn what it’s like to live in someone else’s shoes. Maybe true empathy will motivate us to get out of this mess.—Bonnie Lei, from Walnut, California
