Author and editor Nora Shalaway Carpenter (Fault Lines) pulls together an inspiring and varied collection of cli-fi short stories, all designed to encourage hope in their readers. Onward includes dystopian, speculative, and realistic fiction as well as poetry and essays that highlight the myriad ways the climate crisis manifests and contributes to the "intense climate grief and hopelessness" of young people. But as Carpenter points out in her foreword, "it is story--much more than facts--that changes minds."
Onward opens forcefully with "The Care and Feeding of Mother" by two-time Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly. This dystopian story features a girl in an overfarmed world who finds and nurtures a virtually unheard-of resource: seeds. Kelly's brief narrative is cynically hopeful, reminding the audience of what they take for granted and showing that there's still time for change. Jeff Zentner uses poetry to tell a fictionalized account of "Tellico Lake," the Tellico Dam, and the near extinction of the snail darter. Zentner emphasizes that "it's easy to think something will never happen/ if you can't see it happening right away." In Xelena González's essay "The World Within," she shares a personal experience from a college writing class where she realized that "when we look at the world through a lens of familial love, destruction becomes harder to inflict."
The vast array of voices, perspectives, topics, and styles make Onward a distinct and intriguing collection. A QR code following the acknowledgements leads to a slew of additional resources that will "allow readers to take some kind of action immediately," helping them to move onward... and to save the world. --Jen Forbus, freelancer