M
uch as Eric Schlosser revised his Fast Food Nation
findings into the child-centered Chew on This
, Gore produces a new edition of An Inconvenient Truth
, “adapted for a new generation.” “Earth is sometimes called the Goldilocks planet—neither too hot like Venus with its thick poisonous atmosphere nor too cold like Mars,” Gore writes, then delivers resounding evidence that things are no longer just right. Captioned color photos compare thriving coral to bleached reefs—victims of rising ocean temperatures and pollution—and place images of former glaciers side-by-side with today’s snowless plains or lakes. Where some images celebrate astronauts’ views of the Earth from space, others show a refuse dump in Mexico City and Tokyo’s astonishing urban sprawl; one startling snapshot shows dull brown, clearcut land in Haiti (“98 percent of their forests have been cut down”) abutting the still-green, forested Dominican Republic. Although lighter on textual explication of climate change, this children’s text hews closely to the original and to Gore’s famous slide show; that said, the urgency of conservation fails to come across in the pedestrian prose, which might fail to inspire its audience. For all his subject’s vital importance, Gore provides just two brief pages on ways to “Take Action.” Readers will want to browse the amazing pictures, but will have to look elsewhere for ideas on making a difference. Ages 11-up. (May)
