Travelling the world to learn about climate change is dangerous work: Captain Polo dodges bullets in East Africa, gets chased by furious, knife-wielding market sellers in the streets of Cairo, narrowly escapes getting arrested by Italian coastguards in the Mediterranean Sea, and gets captured in London Zoo!
Today's climate crisis may be the most serious environmental issue in human history.
Understanding the causes and effects of climate change can be complicated and confusing. This funny adventure comic packed with action and interesting climate change facts teaches what we can all do to fight global warming.
Based in biodiversity-rich Ecuador, Alan wears several hats: he is an author-illustrator, an educator and a conservation biologist. Alan’s work is inspired by the majesty and fragility of nature and the need to do everything we can to protect it.
Alan combines his artistic creativity with his technical experience and knowledge to create scientifically accurate, educational children’s books full of quirky, comic humour and fun action, and usually bearing a message about how everyone can help preserve Nature.
Alan draws the artwork in his comic or picture books by hand and then edits it all digitally.
He is the author of five educational comic books for middle grade children, among which his main ongoing focus is the Captain Polo series about climate change.
Alan is also the author of 3 climate change-themed picture books for children within the 6-8 age range.
Check it all out on Alan’s website, AJH Education Comics and Cartoons: https://alanhesse.com
This week's Author Insight from The Adventures of Polo the Bear is about being creative.
Specifically in this case, how to address, on one comic-strip page, several different but inter-related environmental and social issues, each of them serious and unacceptable, while also being funny and entertaining.
This page is a good example of what I think works.
In this sequence my character Polo the bear learns about the land-rights injustices faced by Maasai pastoralists, and the (related) effects of global warming and profit-greedy tourism on lions (and on Maasai). As if that were not enough, he also gets shot at by a trophy hunter - a coherent means of instantly inserting action and humour into what would otherwise be quite heavy technical content.
Book Excerpt
The Adventures of Captain Polo: Polo in East Africa
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