Watching my children take part in the school strike movement had a big impact on me. Are any parts of the book based on things that have happened in your own family? Was there one incident or something you read that helped to spark the idea?Ĥ. There's nothing more serious than the topic at the heart of this novel - climate change - but I hope the book is as entertaining as anything else I have written.ģ. Serious points can be made through humour, and, indeed, using humour grabs people's attention and opens them up to ideas they might otherwise reject. I very much believe that these two aren't opposites. The two things that I always hope to bring together in my writing (and, ideally, in the books I choose to read) are humour and seriousness. If you could choose a couple of words that sum up the book for you, which would you choose? The real surprise is how they find themselves at the heart of a headline-grabbing climate protest, in the eye of the media storm, with millions around the world hanging on their every word.Ģ. And at the heart of it is a moving friendship between a suburban 13-year-old boy yearning for excitement, and the commune-dwelling daughter of a lifelong protester who is yearning for domesticity.Īt first, it seems unlikely that these two could ever become friends. It's about how doing the right thing for the planet can seem like selfishness to your family. It's a funny and serious look at personal and global responsibilities.
It's the story of a teenage girl who runs away from home and moves into a climate protest camp, and how this impacts on the lives of her younger brother and her parents. They feel in their hearts, passionately, that this is their own future they're fighting for.īut this isn't an angry or depressing dystopian novel. It's about how, for the young, the battle for climate justice isn't an abstract or intellectual one. This novel was inspired by my children, and specifically by the way they were in turn inspired by Greta Thunberg's school strike movement. Can you tell us about your new book, The Summer We Turned Green? We asked the author to tell us more about what inspired his book.ġ. It is also very, very funny and is bound to find a receptive audience among teenage readers. William Sutcliffe's latest novel for teenagers, The Summer We Turned Green, explores serious themes, particularly climate change, but it's also about families and friendship, responsibility and taking care of each other. Read a chapter extract from The Summer We Turned Green He has written 13 novels, including the international bestseller Are You Experienced? and The Wall, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and he writes for adults, young adults and children. William Sutcliffe's The Gifted, the Talented and Me is a rare funny book for teenage readers and his latest novel, The Summer We Turned Green, will also have lots of appeal for this age range.
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