Changing World: Cold Data for a Warming Planet

''Why and how to become a "climate change hero," presented in pithy infographics.

Gibson lays it all out in a mix of easily graspable facts and trends embedded in tellingly designed graphics, from a five-toed "carbon footprint" to a pie chart describing energy use in the home to a stairlike vertical bar chart of increasingly effective personal ways to reduce that footprint and another one showing both rising ocean levels and cities that will be flooded over time. The author/illustrator invites readers to trace one decision tree to score their fresh fruit's environmental impact and another before buying any new "stuff" while broadening their perspectives with maps, winding timelines, and visual representations that trace the history of life in terms of a single day (with humans trotting in over the last four seconds), show where the waste plastic is, present our planet as a set of interlocking units from cryosphere ("All the frozen water") to atmosphere, and consider the "environmental cost of the clothes we wear." Along with getting its message across in a visually stimulating way, this offers younger eco-activists a first-rate toolbox of facts and basic background on which to build." — Kirkus, Starred Review