Margin Notes

H Is for Hope: Climate Change From A-Z is a collection of short essays written by Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change; The Sixth Extinction. The 26 essays, ranging from a few words to a few pages, are organized alphabetically and are paired with Wesley Allsbrook’s stunning illustrations.

Kolbert sets the stage for the focus of the collection in the introduction: “Climate change resists narrative—and yet some account of what’s happening is needed. Millions of lives are at stake. And upward of a million species. And there are decisions to be made, even if it’s unclear who, exactly, will make them.”

Depending on the topic, the essays can be categorized as scientific and informative, historical and background knowledge, social commentary, or calls to action. For example, A is for Savante Arrhenius who developed the world’s first climate model; B is for Blah, Blah, Blah—a refence to Greta Thunberg’s famous speech; and C is for Capitalism, an explanation the costs of climate change.

Not only is this an eye-opening and informative collection of essays, it also holds many possibilities as a mentor text:

• The clever structure can be used as inspiration for organizing shorter pieces of writing.
• Each essay is beautifully written and offers many examples of craft moves.
• Because the essays fall into a variety of categories, pieces from the collection can be grouped together as an example of writing in a variety of forms on a single theme or topic.
• Many of the essays focus on scientific or technical topics and can be used as models of techniques for making complex concepts and ideas user-friendly.
• The illustrations that accompany the essays are wonderful and can be used as a study of representation techniques or to explore how the illustrations support the text and vice versa.
• A number of the illustrations present data and are excellent models of data visualization.