It can be difficult to blend educational value and entertainment in children’s books, but writer and illustrator Claudia Dávila is having success with Luz Sees the Light, the first graphic novel in a series about the environment.
Dávila said the idea of Luz came five years ago, when she was having lunch with her husband and a friend. The friend taught Dávila the term “peak oil” and this was the start of Luz. “Peak oil is the current phenomenon of petroleum supplies plateauing and then declining, changing our reality which is based on globalization and infinite growth,” Dávila explained. “The antidote to this impending crash is to be happily and creatively self-sufficient, sustainable, and resilient.”
She turned to her creativity to help the situation. “I wanted to create a weekly comic strip that would inform readers and the general public on how to re-skill: learn how to make valuable and useful aids that require no electricity while weaning ourselves from the import-dependent economy.”
Thus she created a webcomic, originally titled "Luz: Girl of The Knowing." Kids Can Press, which was scouting for good webcomics to turn into books, liked what it saw.
“I took my Luz character and developed her a little more and fleshed out a longer storyline in book one of the series,” Dávila explained, “and felt that the first book should be an introduction to our impending energy crisis, while future volumes will focus on specific areas affected by the energy crisis, including transportation, water, food, and shelter.”
The series, which is called The Future According to Luz, came out this summer, with two more books scheduled to be released. Dávila is hoping for more Luz beyond that. “As with my original web comic, and blog project, I hope to help introduce the topic of peak oil and energy descent to readers, to people in general,” she told PW Comics World. “Focusing on an 8-12 year age group makes it youthful and fun but still intelligent and appealing to all ages, including adults! Luz Sees the Light shows inspiring ideas of how we can come together as neighborhoods and communities to make local changes that help everyone's quality of life once our fuel-based conveniences begin to dwindle. Specific projects are explained step-by-step as well, in an end-of-book project feature in each volume. So I would say the two things I hope to accomplish are to shed awareness of our current energy predicament, while gaining ideas, skills and optimism to deal with it.”
Dávila said there are different ways the books can be used by teachers and parents. “By having kids read the books, they can discuss what signs pointed to the energy crisis, and ask what kinds of things individuals, groups, and businesses could do as a response. What are the advantages of responding to the crisis early, and would they be long-term solutions? What might the future look like, both for the energy situation—if no one responds—and also for communities that do respond? These kinds of questions and topics of conversation help readers and adults get into the heart of the matter: what does it look like to create the best quality of life for people that also makes it the best environment for nature to flourish?”
This isn’t the only environmental book coming from Kids Can Press, a company that is also expanding its graphic novel retinue. Publicist Erin Winzer said that part of what makes Luz stand out is Dávila’s ability to take on a serious topic with a light touch. “Kids will recognize themselves in Luz's social world,” she said. “Kids will also recognize themselves in Luz's world, environmentally. The environmental stressors in the first book are familiar (more familiar than we'd intended when we'd first started): rolling blackouts, sky-high fuel prices, increased food prices. In the second book issues include: heat waves, droughts and water shortages. Although, these are heavy topics, Claudia doesn't present these concepts in a doom-and-gloom way. Luz is, by nature, optimistic. So she comes to understand the situation (with friends and family) and she figures out ways in which they (as a community) can help out, get by, even thrive.”
Winzer mentioned how children today often see bad news about the environment and this can upset them and leave them feeling helpless. “I think Luz acknowledges that, as kids, they won't be solving the question of peak oil or curbing industrial waste. Instead, Luz models actions that kids can take within their communities—and most importantly, that change starts small—it's just an altered frame of mind.”
