As The Seas Rise, soft eco message mixed with too much faux can do

Adults who visit an elementary school library will experience various thoughts. Look at how skinny these books are. Look at how many books are in this library. How can all of these books get the attention that they deserve? As The Seas Rise is an illustrated book with noble intentions but is five eras too late. The rise of sea level and climate change is science, it’s happening, but I would argue that some books do more to damage the greater cause than the good that it intends. For example, if this book were more informational about sunny day flooding then it would have more of a punch and immediacy. As it stands, the book melds one strong issue, a soft character portrait, and an environmental issue that’s tough for kids to comprehend into a listless illustrated story adrift in a crowded library of better books.

As The Seas Rise: Nicole Hernandez Hammer and the Fight for Climate Justice is by Angela Quezada Paron and is the story of Hammer, her upbringing and passion for water. OK, that’s a glib manner in which to state that, but the relationship between sea level, the book’s purpose, and the book’s title gave us a feeling of limbo.   Hammer lived in the forests of Guatemala for a bit as a child with her family before they move to find work in the United States. It was challenging at first because they didn’t speak English. Her family’s home was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew and her love of nature was conflicted with the damage that the storms produced.

She went on to become a scientist and studied climate change. Hammer observed rainfall, how it collected in certain neighborhoods and educated people in English and Spanish about the “heat island effect”. The scientist went on to meet President Obama when he gave the State of the Union address in 2015 and left academia to become an activist, concentrating on low-income or minority populations who might be affected by her passion issues.

The book intends to be a soft, eco primer for early elementary school-aged children. If you look at the book from a surface-level perspective it does that, but don’t think about it too much. The concept of the seas rising competes for page count with the climate justice angle. The political undertones of the book bely the fact that Hammer is a scientist, yet the book’s portrayal of her is more in line with community organizing. When it shows her informing officials about sunny day flooding (when the high tide creeps into the city streets), the text ominously says that not enough people listened.

Sunny day flooding is happening along coastal cities, but to imply that it would’ve stopped had that group listened to her is unrealistic and far too simplistic, even for an illustrated book. The next couple of pages show low-income communities that are up their ankles in water with kids unable to get to school buses and houses becoming infested with mold. By the end of As The Seas Rise readers will see a Benetton group of people looking at their homes that are retrofitted with solar panels and text stating that people had created “living shorelines to protect against flooding.”

But then, on the very next page, we see an illustration of Hammer testifying or speaking to a diverse group from a different Benetton ad with text acknowledging that “seas continue to rise” and that work has to be done. There are certain narrative paths that illustrated books follow, especially non-fiction ones based on current happenings or a person’s life. Essentially, they always end with, “but their struggle isn’t over” or “their invention was a great benefit to people everywhere.” However, in As The Seas Rise the book ends with both instances being true, which waters down the problem, as well as, the supposed solution. If anything, sunny day flooding and fecal bacteria on the coast is increasing, which would make for a more timely and interesting book than this one.

As The Seas Rise: Nicole Hernandez Hammer and the Fight for Climate Justice is by Angela Quezada Paron and is available on Antheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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