Central Valley student writes children’s book. He hopes it helps fight climate change
Visalia high school student Arjan Batth wants to educate future generations about the importance of taking care of our planet, so he wrote a children’s book to illustrate his point.
Growing up with asthma, the 17-year-old Batth, a senior at El Diamante High, knows what it’s like to deal with the damaging effects of pollution in the Central Valley. Batth said that growing up with health issues gave him a passion for understanding the environment around him and hopes to make a change.
“I think just growing up with asthma as a child really influenced me to write,” Batth said. “I really want to change people’s thinking how they see things and how they see the issue of climate change.”
Combining his passion for writing and his passion for the environment, last summer Batth set out to write a children’s book “Dear Humans... A Cloud Pleading for Humanities Attention on Climate Change.”
The book is narrated from a cloud’s perspective as he searches for the reason why the sky is no longer blue.
“I think people see climate control as a very complicated issue,” Batth said. “ I want to simplify it for children so children can know what the issue is and how they can make the situation better.”
Redwood junior did illustrations
In order to bring the book to life, Batth worked with 16-year-old Alyssa White, a junior at Redwood High School, to help with the illustrations. White said that working on the book was great because it was a chance to help teach a generation of children.
“I think this book was just really informative for kids to learn that helping the environment benefits so many people in the world,” White said. “Kids that read it will learn how to keep the world clean and healthy for future generations.”
According to Batth, his book was supposed to come out on Earth Day back in April but due to the coronavirus pandemic printing was postponed. Batth said stay-at-home orders related to COVID-19 help illustrate his point in the book about human’s affect on the environment.
“In the first few weeks of the people staying home we saw pollution decrease all over the world and animals were coming back to areas they had not been to in awhile,” Batth said. “It showed that nature is resilient and if we change the we live a difference can be made. We just have to give it a chance and we can make things better.”
The book is available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. All proceeds from the book will be donated to local organizations to help fight climate change, Batth said.