Vanquish the Storm Lords and Anthrogs!

The power of stories to shape our understanding of the world is a central theme explored in this episode. We welcome Laurel Colless, an author dedicated to igniting the imaginations of young readers through her Peter Blue series of fantasy-adventure novels. 

By infusing her narratives with real-world environmental issues, Laurel not only entertains but also educates, allowing children and adolescents to confront the complexities of climate change. Our discussion explores how Peter Blue and his friends confront ecological challenges, transforming fear into hope and agency through teamwork and imaginative problem-solving. 

Our discussion navigates the challenges of communicating urgent topics to a younger audience without overwhelming them. Laurel shares her insights on how fantasy can be a vehicle for addressing serious issues, transforming fear into empowerment. We also touch on the significance of humor and hope in storytelling, emphasizing that these elements can provide a necessary balance in discussions about climate anxiety. As we follow Laurel’s journey from corporate sustainability to children’s literature, listeners gain insight into the transformative potential of narratives.

This episode is a celebration of creativity and a testament to the importance of fostering a hopeful vision for the future, reminding us all that through storytelling, we can inspire change and resilience.

Takeaways:

• We are a storytelling species. The most powerful technology throughout human history is storytelling, shaping civilizations and beliefs.
• As myth-makers and storytellers, we use stories to navigate our understanding of the universe and our place within it.
• Children's literature can be a force for good, addressing climate change through engaging narratives.
• Creating a compelling narrative around climate action is crucial for inspiring a global response to the crisis.

Links referenced in this episode:

• Renagale Tales
• Eye of the Stormlord
• Knights Unite
• Carbon Busters
• GlobalWarmingIsReal.com

Of all the great technologies that shaped humanity, the most enduring, the one that arguably has most shaped the human endeavor, is the story.

We are a species of myth makers and storytellers.

Entire civilizations, systems of belief and worldviews are imagined, built and maintained on a foundation of stories and myths, the great ark of human understanding.

From our distant relatives huddled around primordial fire, seeking warmth and light and protection, to the images dancing in the glare of our screens, we define the world and our place in it by the stories we tell and the myths we employ.

Science and mathematics help us quantify immutable laws.

Stories stand in the yawning cosmic chasm where time and space converge, helping us to understand what it means to be human in a dangerous, mysterious universe.

The themes endure, cautioning us against hubris, inspiring reverence for the forces of nature, and imparting a sense of wonder in imagining other worlds.

The story of humanity is just that, the story of the many challenges that climate change presents.

Forging a narrative that at once speaks to the enormity of the problem while maintaining a sense of hope and agency is, I suggest, the most daunting.

We have the science well on hand regarding the impact of anthropogenic climate change.

We have the tools to mitigate it, but we are failing to create a narrative that can bring a global population together to fight a common and existential predicament.

Storytelling is an essential tool of understanding for all people and all generations.

Younger readers, with their vivid imaginations unsullied by the vagaries of adult admonitions and calcified worldviews, are open to fantastical worlds and how things can be instead of how they are now.

Nurturing this fertile ground of imagination is a means of empowerment, allowing the coming generations growing into a climate changed world to cope, adapt, evolve and thrive in a world they will create out of the ashes of the burning world they inherit.

One of the things I like most about producing this podcast is learning about the journeys of the people I talk with the concentric lines of intent, circumstance and fate that lead them to do what they do.

And today my guest is Laurel Colis.

Laurel is an Australian New Zealander, children's author and creator of the Peter Blue series of fantasy adventure novels aimed at preteen readers.

The series blends mythic elements and fantastical adventure with real world environmental issues, leveraging compelling narrative to teach science and environmental concepts.

Kolla studied comparative literature and Greek mythology at university.

Her literary training didn't lead directly to writing novels, but instead to a 25 year career in sustainability in the corporate world throughout Asia, the United States and Europe with companies like Mitsubishi and Nokia.

However, her time in the corporate world left her frustrated with, as she puts it, the lack of progress in the grown up world.

So much potential to do something and so little being done.

It was in Istanbul during the Gezi park protest in Taskum Square, but I'll let Laurel tell that story nonetheless.

The experience inspired her to do whatever she could to shape a better future for her two daughters and their generation.

She returned to her love of mythic literature and set out to create Peter Blue, transforming the great stories of gods, monsters, mortals and heroes into a new kind of myth.

She arms her characters with courage, confident in the knowledge that together they have all they need to vanquish the Stormlords.

The series incorporates global environmental threats as central conflicts.

The villainous enthrogs, demons born from garbage dumps, represent environmental destruction while Peter and his friends model teamwork and creative problem solving.

The books are acclaimed for their skillful balance of adventure, humor and science education.

As of this recording, the Peter Blue series currently has three titles.

Eye of the Stormlord introduces eco fantasy themes in Peter's adventures and challenges in combating climate threats.

In Renegale Tales, Peter and his friends are sent to catch Renegale imps and contend with a toxic yellow fog that leads them to discover deeper secrets and danger.

The plot brings the characters into direct confrontation with environmental disasters.

Knights Unite focuses on children advocates at an environmentalist school who must balance their developing ideals with real world challenges.

The book has been described as a fast paced science fantasy Hogwarts with climate action.

Listen in as Laurel expands on her work, philosophy and life story.

Like the young readers of her novels, you'll come away inspired and engaged, imagining a world free of anthrogs and Stormlords.

Let's go.

Hello Laura Colis, Nice to meet you and thank you for being on our podcast.

Thank you.

Hi.

Hi.

Tom Laurel is the author of the Peter Blue series of books for young adults.

What is the age range that you're targeting?

Actually I've been targeting 9 to 12 year olds but I recently got recognition from the US Green Book Award where they placed it as a young adult book.

So at Delta Penn I'm thinking upper middle grade to 13 or 14 year olds and also co reading because I think there's a lot in there also for adults or parents or caregivers to co read.

I would think so so in the Peter Blue series, you're blending magical realism with these urgent environmental themes.

So what inspired you to use that fantasy as a vehicle for communicating climate change to these young readers?

And how do you balance the magic with realism in your storytelling?

Okay, that's a really good question.

I appreciate that question because I did put quite a bit of thought into it.

And, you know, I've been doing this for more than 10 years now, but when I first started pulling together stories and ideas for this series of novels, I was asking myself, you know, how am I going to do this?

Because I had decided already I wanted a new kind of mythology or storytelling that would somehow raise awareness of the climate crisis.

So that was my mission.

But of course, I understand perfectly that for 9 to 13 year olds having an environmental mission and writing a kid's sort of thriller, I mean, it's quite hard to marry those two ideas.

And if a kid gets a whiff from their parents that this isn't educational or environmental, they're going to go as far away from your book as they can.

So I had to think.

I knew climate change was gonna be my big villain, but how do you represent that in a way which is compelling, entertaining, fun, not too scary?

So kids could still be a little bit scared, but in the safety of their pajamas in the bedroom.

Storytimes, I did the masterclass which Salman Rushdie has, and it was such a.

It was so perfect for me because he has, he's the true master of having these fantasy overlays with a kind of realism or realistic backdrop.

And I hesitate to use the term magical realism because I feel like that's somehow owned by the Latin Americans, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others who really made that their own.

But I did want to have this idea that I wouldn't be world building, so I'm not making some kind of world that's over there that my child readers would get a free pass and feel like, oh, this is a problem that belongs over there.

Nothing to do with me.

No, I wanted today's realistic problems, but I wanted to enter it through the imagination, I guess, to so take it through the imagination.

So I'm telling you too much.

I guess the main point is I created monsters.

So I went out and created monsters.

We're the monsters.

And I was living in Greece at the time.

I'm married to a diplomat, so I'm now living in Helsinki, by the way.

So we're in slightly different time zones.

But I decided that when I was living in Greece and I started delving into Greek mythology, which I studied at university.

And I thought, what I'm going to do is create something, a new kind of myth that would be more relevant for today's children and could start to draw children in with these monsters.

So I needed a name for the monsters and I took a Greek word which I had just learned.

I'd only.

I've been living there a few months and the word for mankind or humanity is anthropos, which is, you know, we all know.

We.

We know that actually we know it from anthropogenic climate change.

That's right, anthropology.

So the word for humankind, I took that stem.

Anthrop.

Anthropop.

Anthral.

And I put it together with the English word hog.

That's no offense to pigs.

I always say when I tell the story, I'm.

Because animals do not take more than their share, generally when they're in the wild, whereas humans do.

So the idea of overconsumption and human.

Not greed, but just taking more than we need because it's there and, and putting that into the context of landfill and trash and marine litter and pollution and all the garbage that goes with overconsumpt and creating these monsters that are birthed out of pollution and basically they're birthed out of garbage or they are nature spirits in this kind of.

As far as people can suspend their disbelief.

I mean, a lot of people do talk to nature spirits and believe in nature spirits, but nature spirits that have been turned by pollution, showing up as weather monsters, showing up as very dangerous killer storms, wildfires, floods, you know, you know the drill.

I mean, this is.

Right.

Yeah.

I feel like I've.

I've managed to get some success with this because in the book which I've just released, which just got this recognition as actually.

But this night to unite.

So this book has a sea monster, a sea beast, and it has, I guess you could say if you're looking into mythology, indigenous biblical or Greek mythology, you could say that it has the look of a leviathan, if you've read your Old Testament.

But it's also got the behavior of some of these monsters that showed up when Odysseus was the sailors.

In the great epic, Homeric epic, Odysseus runs across.

I'm pretty sure he runs across these two quite famous sea monsters, Scylla and Cherubnus, who.

I think that's where the term rock and a hard place came from, because you've got to go through a narrow state and you have these two monsters, they suck seawater up and then they vomit it back onto the boat and then they create a whirlpool.

So that's what this is doing.

Except in my case, it's sucking up garbage, seawater and vomiting that back into pool assembly.

So I don't know.

Once I start talking about this, I start to talk without stopping saying, you better.

It's all very interesting.

Yeah.

So you take on these complex issues, pollution, biodiversity, all the climate related disasters, and there's this tension between these monsters that you're creating and your characters that are dealing with it.

How do you approach these topics without overwhelming your readers?

And how do you deal with the idea of eco anxiety that young people must be feeling?

Okay, well, ego anxiety is definitely a real thing and it's something we're talking more and more about.

Children are actually being diagnosed and it can be quite serious.

For the purpose of this conversation, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a psychiatrist.

And when I'm talking about it, I'm talking more in the sense of you're feeling glum.

This is also a really, it's, it's really, it's real.

And I have two daughters.

They were actually 9 and 12 when I started this project and they're now graduating.

My daughter graduated on Saturday.

But they had a lot of anxiety when I started working with the eco clubs.

And of course I made them come in and be part of my group teaching children as a volunteer.

When I lived in Greece, which was the first time in my life when I couldn't actually work, I didn't speak Greek, so I started volunteering, which is where this grew up from.

But eco anxiety comes for, particularly in children when they go out and they learn something, for example, at school or they read something or they see it on TikTok and then they go home.

So they learn about the climate crisis and they're like, this is urgent.

And then they go home and they see what their parents are doing or not doing, or their leaders in their community or political leaders or in their church.

They see that.

It's like I still remember Greta Turnberry at the UN saying, nobody's doing anything.

Right.

I remember that.

And this is how kids sometimes feel.

Or they have the opposite and they feel like, this is so hopeless, there's nothing we can do.

So, you know, the other side.

So what I've tried to do with the book and I've been really mindful of this is.

And what I also tried to do in the environmental clubs was kid led action.

So, you know, take action.

And I Called the clubs, the Carbon Buses Club, just because I like to have the word carbon, which is quite scientific, and there's obviously something very relevant here, but tricky.

I added the word bust.

Carbon busting, as in reducing your climate footprint, looking for clever ways, or talking about, of course, we have all the other harmful greenhouse gases and other problems.

But I wanted this idea of busting because it sounds a bit like, bust a move, like, do something, let's get going.

And that's exactly what kids need to pull them out of this.

Because, you know, I do also worry sometimes that maybe I told my own children too much, because I can remember one of my daughters crying for some nights about deforestation.

And they had been shown pictures of football fields, and then they'd been told every 10 minutes in the Amazon, this many football fields is going down.

And I remember vividly some years ago when we moved back to Helsinki, where I am now talking to a group of parents in a rather informal presentation on an environmental day.

And one of the dads in the audience when I was showing some of the things I was doing, he stood up at question time and said, do you really think we should be giving this much information to our kids?

And I, honestly, I was a little bit taken aback.

And maybe it was my bad, because I just presumed, of course, we need to tell them because they're going to inherit this mess.

We need to keep going.

But I wonder if I was being a little selfish, because with my own children, I still don't tell them about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

I'm keeping the magic alive, and they're 18 and 21.

I like the idea of magic, but I also like the idea of.

Yeah, magic can be a vehicle to communicate realism.

I was hoping you said that, because the way Salman Rushdie put it is he said, there's so many ways to tell the truth, and sometimes using fantasy, it can be actually a more powerful way with children to sort of get in at the problem and make it feel somehow palatable and manageable, digestible in a way.

Yeah.

Communicating climate change for anybody, for any age group, in my experience, that is the challenge.

How do you talk to people about climate change now in the adult world?

You have maybe a different set of issues.

At least here where I am in the United States, you're.

You're fighting information.

Yeah.

Misinformation.

Do you address that in.

Yeah, I have a character in this current book.

He's actually the owner of the yacht that goes down.

And I love him, Mr. Dean.

He's an 80 year old billionaire from Australia and he's a sort of, well, I shouldn't name names, but you can imagine the kind of people I have built his character around.

But he's also very loving and he's got a big, big heart and he loves my main protagonist, Peter Blue.

But he is an anthrog denier and all the kids are like, he's an anthrog denier.

And they've actually been out in book one and they've been fighting anthrogs, these huge storm lords.

And then he's like nah, it's just a bunch of lies made up by governments to take away more of my.

And they're like no.

And so he says well show me one of these anthrog thingies and I'll see.

And sure enough in the middle of the book he meets the sea beast.

And I don't set the kid, he's.

Converted and then he's converted and he starts using his money and his agency to get things done.

So that's the best kind of denouement in my opinion.

Yeah, we'd hope we can find some of those folks in real life.

Yeah, exactly.

But to your point about adults talking to adults, I'm more and more thinking that we should just steer away from even using the word climate crisis because that's an opportunity.

I mean addressing fossil fuel and addressing pollution, it's just an opportunity to co create a better world, to co create a world, a healthier, cleaner world.

It just for me is such a no brainer and I was lucky enough, I was just gonna say I, it just came to my mind that I went to see the chairman of the IPCC who came to Helsinki a few weeks ago and one of the things that he showed, I mean it's all pretty dire news.

He had a long PowerPoint presentation with all the numbers and we're not close to our Paris targets, but you know all this.

But one of the things he pulled up a slide and the slide was called co benefits and he was drawing attention to the things that we can do that not only address these numbers but have extraordinary other benefits to society for job creation, wealth creation.

Because of course solving the climate crisis is also about bringing everyone along, not just right.

I, I agree with you.

I've had people ask me a lot how I communicate, how do I try to communicate climate change.

And, and I've decided if it's possible to not even mention the word climate or climate crisis, especially steering around it, especially here in the United States.

You mentioned that and, and you're off you.

No, there's so much baggage with the, with.

Yeah, it's just baggage.

And also people are fearful because, you know, so the government's gonna take away my car or stop me from eating my beef or the government wants to do this or that, you know, and I won't be able to.

I did one of the most, I would say one of the most exciting and biggest projects of my life.

In my former career, before I became a children's writer, I was working in Virginia Tech and they gave me carte blanche to.

And I came from Europe and I had all these big ideas about what the Europeans were doing.

And I'd been working at Nokia, which, you know, was a global success story at the time.

At the time.

And I said, why don't we do this kind of Bill Clinton style energy efficiency program where we bring building owners in and we take all the low hanging fruit for addressing the climate crisis, which is basically energy efficiency in big old building stock, decent sized buildings, 10 to 20 floors, and you'll be able to retrofit them using Virginia Tech technologies.

We bring in the professors, we have these multi stakeholder discussions, we bring in the building owners, we bring in the federal government, and we bring in like Arlington county and other local governments and we make this big project and raise awareness on how you can win, win, win.

If you retrofit your building, you can basically within seven years, according to the way we set this up, you could within seven years have amortized all the loans for your upfront expenses through energy savings.

Yeah, it's a perfect equation.

And I was so excited to be pitching it.

I was kind of in the middle of bringing together the partners, talking about all the technologies and trying to bring everyone in.

And then we got a lot of pledges.

I mean, this is quite an old story now.

It was a big story.

That's good.

All these developers were coming to the press conference and when you have that big money came to the press conference and Washington, Virginia Tech was happy because they're a Blacksburg school a little bit out and they wanted to get more of a presence in the national capital region, where they did actually have a campus in Alexandria.

And I stayed with that for five years and a lot of the building owners who pledged.

So we said, let's try to get a hundred buildings and we'll have all this avoided carbon emissions numbers that we can throw at the media and it'll be so great.

And how many people do you think really finally went ahead rent trip?

I'm afraid to ask.

Yeah, I mean it was really, really slow.

And then people kept saying, I mean, of course there were legitimate concerns as well, but people were saying if I want to flip my building, you know, I'm in it for the profit, then I sell forward the loan.

It's complicated.

And there were so few uses.

And then of course, we did have.

I shouldn't.

The recession, the recession which came.

But at the same time, you know, there were lots of pledges of a big amount of energy efficiency investment dollars.

I wasn't planning to talk to you about this, but as a memory, it was an example of how grown ups sometimes feel compelled to and sometimes really are compelled to put short term financial gains ahead of long term.

Sensible decision making.

Yeah, and I'm sympathetic to that too.

It's not easy for parents also to always be able to.

Sometimes these things come at a premium.

Right.

Do you address short termism or long term those issues in any way in the books?

I'm thinking because it's top of mind.

But these are still like kids adventure stories.

But you know, the grownups are usually one step behind in these books.

So the book is a school series.

If I can jump back to the books.

So what you would call sort of ensemble literature where you have a big group.

Peter Blue is my protagonist and he sort of modeled.

I'll be very open.

He is modeled around the boy Arthur.

I feel like that's the only big story and Harry Potter around it as well.

But I didn't model it around Harry Potter.

I modeled around T.H.

But of course we're most fascinated by the lovely time at the beginning when he's with Merlin.

And I do have a Merlin type character who's the forest mentor at the school.

So it's a school series and the kids come from everywhere.

And it's the top ecodemic, we call it.

So the top ecodemic kids from all around the world.

So everyone's speaking English, but no real culture or language is highlighted.

It's just the culture of the school, which is to take the intelligence from every possible source so it's high tech, but it's also nature intelligence.

And the school is what makes it.

What gives me some depth in the storytelling is that the school is run by a larger organization, a grown up organization called Gaia intended, but that's an acronym, the Global Advanced Intelligence Agency.

And there's an element of the Pentagon sort of Hogwarts.

There's a whole bit.

You have real grownups who are trying to do all this stuff and they're sharing a lot.

I mean they have these very advanced anthrog warfare technology devices and helicopters called goshawks, but they also talk to frogs and they're always telling the children that nature has so much to tell us if we'd only just get better at listening.

So I very much have brought that together that you have all of the intelligence, the intelligence is available to be tapped into and that's the environment that the children are in, which I love.

And of course they all have different strengths.

So one of the side characters who now is getting her own book, she is able to communicate with nature spirits.

She's always been able to.

And some of the others scoff at this.

So I always have two sides and the others can't see what she's seeing.

So you know, so it sounds like.

You'Re addressing perhaps how we relate to nature, our relationship with nature.

Is there a juxtaposition between technology and nature in your books?

I hope there is because that's what I set out to do.

For example, in book two, Rendegal Tales, which is centered around these massive winds attacking winds, Renegales Wanda is the main character who comes forward in that book and she is very high tech with her gadgetry and her phones and she is big, she's got very ambitious.

She's actually sorry to say, but she's big voice, big everything and she's American.

But she's brilliant and she signs up for everything and she charges forward.

She does it partly because she wants to be best and to be first, but she also does it because she's big hearted and got a big vision and she uses her phone in a way that is of course building up her social media complex, but she also solves a massive natural disaster problem where they have to actually work with nature intelligence.

And she finds a way to use her phone to do that.

I don't want to be a spoiler and it's too hard to explain going, but I really wanted.

So no one's ever asked me that.

So.

So that is actually a real example where it's not just about cold technology, but we want to use everything that we're empowered with.

For example, Peter has a jacket.

So all the Gaia agents who are like these top global intelligent people, men and women, they wear Gaia jackets, which are wearable devices, very intelligent wearable devices.

And Peter has one that he inherited from his dad.

But Peter, my main character, he's much more like me.

He's kind of a flake, not very good with technology.

He's got a wonderful big heart and he's like typo blood.

He goes with everything.

But his dad is a big adventurer who gets into a lot of trouble.

And he had inherited his dad's jacket, but he doesn't really know how to use it.

But luckily his best friend Roly knows everything because his best friend Roly's dad works for Gaia and he mends these Gaia jackets so he knows everything about how stuff works.

And then Peter, when he learns how to use the guy jacket, he invariably gets it wrong.

And then the guy jacket becomes sort of something more because Peter has a lot of light and I don't want to go too deep and.

Okay, okay, yeah.

So you're meeting the generation where they are technologically the phone.

And these are things that are just.

They grew up with.

It's part of their.

And I'm saying DNA, you know, I have to remember I was an old mum, so while I was writing these stories, my kids were growing up because I was late with my children.

So I was quite lucky that way because, for example, I was writing a scene this morning where I had Chu, who's actually one of my favorite characters.

He's very rational, and he pulled out a piece of paper to show his plan.

And I realized after I'd written that of course he wouldn't pull out a piece of paper, he would just hear the whole thing, like on old papers, writing.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So things like that, to your point?

Yeah, yeah.

So are there four books published right now?

No, I.

Peter grew up at an old folks home because his dad was out adventuring and getting lost.

So it's kind of Peter's story of how he got to Spiral hall, which is the school where the action takes place.

And that's the kind of foundational story that maybe I think kids who really get to love Peter might want to go back to.

But at the moment, I'm thinking of these three which are published Eye of the Stormlord, Renegale Tales and Knights unite.

They're thrillers.

They're many thrillers.

It's like Hardy Boys meets Harry Potter meets the Famous Five.

So you have these ensemble groups solving big problems and getting all kinds of problems.

Big tree.

That's an important point too, I think, is communicating to young people that they address these huge, complex, seemingly overwhelming issues.

Exactly, yeah.

And that they have to, because usually they're quite reluctant, but I leave them with no choice.

So it's like you put them up a tree and throw rocks at them.

Who said that?

And then bring them down so that, you know, I'm putting them into these fixes.

And also, I really want to make the point that it takes teamwork, usually to get out of it, which is how we're going to have to work together on the real life crisis.

As I got deeper into the storytelling and looking at mythology, I noticed something which I'd like to share with you because it's been weighing on.

If you look at the mythology, at least in the Anglo Saxon tradition, we look a lot at Greek myths.

This is a classic example.

You take the story of the Minotaur in Crete, the Cretan Minotaur and the story of Theseus.

That problem was something that the adults in that city had created.

I mean, it was to do with your old problems created by people from the past.

And then who gets to go into the labyrinth?

The virgins or the eight children?

I can't remember.

You know, it depends on the seven boys and seven girls have to go in and suffer the consequences every year.

So finally Itheus, who had nothing to do with the problem from the outset, has to come in and fight the Minotaur to finish things off finally.

And luckily he has Ariadne with her golden string to use her savvy and her smart to help him.

So there's a lot of stories like that, also biblical stories where the town behaved badly and not listen to the gods, and then it's invariably the young people that have to come in.

So you.

The script here.

So were you always a writer?

Were you always an author?

No, no.

What did you do before you wrote these books?

What I did was I studied literature at university and thought that that's where I was going to head.

And so I graduated as a literary comparatist and I did my thesis on medieval poetry and I was like going deep into Gawain and the Green Knight and these kinds of things and looking at imagery and looking at this ancient storytelling.

So it was already there, somehow simmering below the surface.

But I Grew up in New Zealand, which for people who don't know, it's way.

It's even below Australia at the bottom of the world.

So as soon as I.

The day I graduated, I actually flew to Italy and I started building a life in the Northern hemisphere because I felt like I wanted to see what was going on.

And before long I ended up in Japan.

So I'm really showing my age now because at that time when I went to Japan, kids in primary school in New Zealand were studying Japanese.

And now those same kids will be studying Chinese, I'm sure, who want you looking at Asian languages.

But then it was a Japan boom and I ended up joining Mitsubishi and becoming a corporate person.

Met my Finnish husband in Tokyo and he took me way north, as far north as you can go, really coming if you start south in New Zealand.

And I ended up working for Nokia for some years during the boom.

And that was really like going back to university and studying business because it was a really successful company and there was a global matrices I was working in and I learned so much.

And then ended up at Virginia Tech when my husband became the Finnish ambassador to US and had a six year tenure there during Obama's first term and George W. Bush's second term.

And so that's when I had the Virginia Tech stuff.

And that's when I also made this pivot because I just got so disheartened by the lack of progress in the grownup world and started.

My husband got a posting in Greece sort of on the way home to Finland, and we got there right as the economy imploded.

2012 or 13, I'm trying to remember.

There was no account of me having a job or doing anything other than this volunteering, which was in a way a gift, when I look back, a gift to me because I started the books then and started working with the upcoming generation.

Yeah, and you did the Al Gore climate reality.

Yeah, I did that from.

Actually, yeah, in Greece.

But no, I did.

I went from Greece and did it in Turkey.

You've also done.

I did.

It was in San Francisco.

Okay, lovely.

How long ago?

In.

Okay, so you before me.

I did it in 20.

2013, I think.

Yeah.

So just talk to you.

Okay, but I think I probably have a better story than you because I went to Turkey alone and Gore had decided to do it in the.

I don't remember the hotel, but it was an American hotel, but he did it right on Taksim Square, right when the uprising that weekend occurred.

The famous one.

Wow.

It was actually relevant because it was young people trying to save a park.

So it was beautifully relevant.

I had booked my hotel on that Taksim Square, just a little hotel, and I couldn't get back to it.

I was out all night with tear gas sitting in the gutter.

Wow.

Yeah.

You have a better story than I do, for sure.

But at that time.

It's changed now.

But Al Gore invited everyone to make their own heroic goal to go with the training.

And so I chose the books and working on this project as my goal.

Okay, so the Al Gore training was the inspiration to do the books.

Interesting.

That's interesting.

Okay.

I think it's very important what you're doing because we adults are leaving the younger generation with existential crisis, unfortunately.

And any way that you can communicate that.

What sort of feedback have you been getting from your book series?

Oh, well, people are praising them.

So I've got two types of audiences.

My issue is that I have to always be pitching to adults to try to persuade them to buy the book so that they would then give it to the children to read.

It's quite hard to market directly to children.

So I'm of course going on two prongs.

I'm going down the literary avenues and also down the environmental, talking to people like Jane Goodall and people who might want to give me an endorsement, but also going for Editorial reviews.

And actually I was really pleased with my most recent Kirkus Review, which described the whole series as.

Let me just get this right.

Commerce has created a kind of Hogwarts that operates on the magic of environmental awareness.

And I thought that was like music to my ears.

Because if someone's going to compare it with Harry Potter, one of the most successful theories we've ever seen in middle grade, I'm happy.

But the problem is it's so hard to market and get.

I'm still going for critical mass.

I'm selling the books all around the world in English speaking countries.

But kids, you know, kids don't talk about the environment.

They just talk about the storytelling and which character they like best.

And.

And that's good.

Happy with.

Yeah, yeah.

That can plant the seed.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping.

And.

And if it doesn't.

If it doesn't.

The other upside, where we were talking about CO benefits before, the other upside is if a kid reads my book just for the pure enjoyment, at least they're reading, right?

At least they're reading.

Exactly.

Because literacy numbers are about as bad as the climate numbers going in the other direction.

Yeah, yeah, I think.

Yeah, in both counts.

That's great.

Encourage people to read, young people to read.

They get into the stories.

If they don't become great environmental champions, at least they might be readers.

Exactly.

Which makes them critical thinking and better in the world.

Co benefits, like you say.

Yeah.

Well, anything you'd like to tell my listeners before we wrap it up?

Well, I'd love your listeners read the books.

I mean, if you go actually on to get the ebook, it's quite low price because I really want parents maybe to download the Kindle, take a look, and then buying the paperback for their children.

So I've deliberately kept the ebook quite low.

If you go onto Amazon, I don't know if you're able to put any links in the show notes, but I will definitely.

That would be really great.

And also to contact me and give me your ideas and tell me what you think, because it's quite a lonely business being an author and figure this out.

But the only way for me now is forward.

I'm going to keep going.

I've got at least three or four more books to write and then I don't know if I can spin this off also into journals or other educational materials, but leading with the storytelling.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe a movie someday.

Oh, hi.

Yeah, sign me up.

I would love that.

Great.

Well, thanks a lot, Laurel.

I appreciate the work you're doing and our conversation and all your links will be in the show notes.

It's great to see people that are addressing the issue in a, you know, as positive a way as possible and making it accessible because it's such a difficult topic, especially communicating this to young people.

So I think it's great that you're doing that.

And actually, I think hope is something we didn't talk about, but we probably should.

Right?

Because when it comes to working with children, the doom and gloom doesn't sell that well.

Like it.

I definitely agree.

Yeah.

Doom and gloom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's.

It's lead hope and it's easy to.

Fall into that, but it doesn't help.

Yeah.

And also humor.

We didn't talk about humor either, but.

Oh, humor.

I mean, of course I'm not trying to write jokes, but I'm always mindful that I'm throwing these characters together and they're so flawed and they're so fun in their own right.

So just putting them together, great way to generate humor as well.

Humor and hope.

Humor and hope.

On that note.

Well, we'll leave it there.

Thanks, Tom.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

And let's keep in touch.

See?

Yeah, definitely.

Hats off to what you're doing.

Don't give up.

Yeah, yeah.

Maintain hope.

You know, that's all we can do.

Either that or give up.

And that's not.

No, we can't.

If we've got kids in our life, we can't do that.

And there are so many different ways that you can look at where your agency is and how to address a problem.

So.

And make it fun.

Make it fun.

And maintain hope.

And maintain a sense of humor.

In addition to her writing, Laurel is the founder of the Carbon Busters Club, a kids climate science program that combines storytelling with science education.

My hat's off to Laurel Colas for focusing her talent and efforts on helping young people and their parents imagine a world where we vanquish weather monsters, stormlords and anthrogs.

Check the Show Notes for more information about Laurel and the Peter Blue series.

And if you like what we do, please subscribe to the podcast if you're so inclined.

You can also donate a dollar or two for the cause with our profound gratitude.

Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next time on Global Warming Is Real.

There's always more we can do to stop climate change.

No amount of engagement is too little.

And now more than ever, your involvement matters.

To learn more and do more, visit globalwarmingisreal.com thanks for listening.

I'm your host, Tom Schueneman.

We'll see you next time on Global Warming Is Real.

Sa.