In the never-ending battle against climate change, sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden has been one of the loudest voices calling for action. We’ve read the news stories, been moved by the speeches, and soon we’ll be able to hold a collection of those speeches in our hands. According to the Washington Post, earlier this month, Penguin Press announced that it had closed a two-book deal with Thunberg—one book of her speeches titled No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, which has already been published in the UK in June, as well as a memoir.
Thunberg, who began her school strike for climate change in 2018 when she was only fifteen years old, has reached the hearts and minds of many with her words, her intelligence, and her agency. She has given speeches in front of world leaders in order to convince them of the danger that our earth is in. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, the book of Thunberg’s speeches will be the first to be published sometime in early November. The title is a line taken from one of Thunberg’s key speeches. If hearing these hallowing, concerning speeches from a determined, but also petrified, sixteen-year-old girl wasn’t enough to convince you of our impending doom, reading it and physically holding it in your hands just might.
The second book, Thunberg’s memoir, is scheduled to be released in the US sometime next year (it will be released in the UK later this year). The memoir will be co-written by Thunberg’s parents, sister, and herself and will be based around the family’s support of Thunberg in her efforts to raise awareness for and enact urgent action against climate change.
One might point out that printing hundreds of thousands of copies of these books on paper is hypocritical to Thunberg’s message considering that deforestation is one of the many factors negatively affecting climate change. However, when asked about environmental sustainability for The Guardian, Penguin stated that it is looking to print all of its books on FSC certified paper which is one of the greenest paper options on the market today.
Hopefully, the release of these two books will spread Thunberg’s message far and wide, encouraging more people to take a stand against climate change and to urge their governments to do the same.
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Flood, Alison. “Greta Thunberg’s speeches to be rushed out as a book”. The Guardian, 2 May 2019, https://theguardian.com/books/2019/may/02/greta-thunberg-speeches-published-no-one-is-too-small-to-make-a-difference
“Teen Activist Signs With Penguin”. Publishers Weekly, 27 September 2019, https://www.publishers weekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/book-deals/article/81293-book-deals-week-of-september-30-2019.html