Laurel Colless on The Authors Alley with Dori DeCarlo

0:00 She is sure, she is sure, she is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is she is you, she is you, is you, she is sure, she is true, she is strong. She is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, is bray, she is she is you. Hello, everyone, welcome to today's Word of Mom Radio. Here on the Word of Mom Media Network. I'm your host, Dori Di Carlo, and you know we are here week after week, show after show, breaking those myths that morepreneurs and business women, especially those of us building our businesses from home, that we're just dabbling in between bake sales and getting our nails done. We're not. We are smart, we are savvy, and we are sharing the wisdom of women in business and in life. And I'm looking forward to bringing today's guest into the author's Alley. Australian New Zealand or War winning children's author Laurel Kolus is a literary comparatist by education, but spent twenty five years working in sustainable business and journalism across Asia, the US and Europe before coming back to writing. She is the founder of the Carbon Busters Club, a kid's climate science program that combines storytelling with science education. In twenty thirteen, Laurel became an al Gore climate reality leader. Through storytelling, her

1:35 aim is to entertain children with page turning thrillers while empowering them to take the lead on big world problems like climate change, extreme weather, and plastic pollution. And I can go into more and more, but I'd much rather bring Laurel in and share her journey. So with that being said, Laurel, welcome to Word of Mom Radio. Thank you so much, and thank you for having me and for that introduction. I really appreciate. I'm happy to be here. My pleasure. So I would love for you to take us on your journey going through the sustainable business practices and journalism and everything else that led you to now becoming an author.

2:17 So twenty five years, yes, working in business on four continents and working in the grown up world, I reached a sort of point of crisis or a point of inflection about ten years ago, where would I have to say. I was working in Washington, DC, and I was working on quite a big project at Virginia Tech, and I was working with the grownups, and I was getting more and more frustrated with the speed at which things were happening. And of course I understand for adults working in business, we have short term financial concerns always to consider, and I think we very often sacrifice long term environmental goals that make good business sense for the short term. So I was working on a project which was urgent addressing energy efficiency and buildings around climate change with climate technologies from Virginia Tech, and I was reaching a point where people were renegging on promises, dragging their feet, you know, not taking action. And I started to think, we don't have time for this. Maybe I should be looking more to the younger, upcoming generation. I'd already already had sort of a grounding in literature and I had just started getting going so with storytelling, and I started to think I was going to jump into something different, but it was actually I don't think I would have made this jump if I hadn't had this kind of slightly woo woo experience as something that's never happened to me before

3:48 and hasn't happened since. And I wonder if I can tell about that. By allies yeah experience, Yeah I do too. It's a great thing. But it was in Washington, d C. It was already ten years ago. So my husband then was he's retired now, but he was an foreign ambassador in Washington representing Finland, and I had a full time job. We had two kids, We had a lot of entertainment. It was during Obama's first term, so going back a little while while now, so I was exhausted and I called in a massage, which was very you know, I decided to treat myself and get a massage, and the woman actually came to the house. Her name was Heather, and she opened up her the massage table and I was so happy to crawl onto it. And she said to me, now, before I start, we're just doing a regular deep tissue massage.

4:49 But before I start, I just want to tell you that every now and then when i'm massaging people, stuff comes up. And she said, I'm not a psychic, and I'm not trying to present myself as a psychic, but if I get anything, should I tell you. I'm like, are you kidding mere? Of course, please tell me if you get something, she said, you know, sometimes it's just psychic information, all the things that maybe you might want to know. So we were halfway through the massage and I remember this so vividly because she was massage in the back of my leg, on my calf muscles, and she said, Okay, I'm getting something, and it's quite big. I mean, at first I thought I was talking about my legs, but she said, I'm getting something that you're writing something. And I said, oh, yeah, but not seriously.

5:34 You know, she said, for children, right, and I said, yeah, but it's not you know, I have a day job and I've got so much going on. She said, you have to do this. She said, I'm getting that. You really have to do this, and it's going to change your life. It's going to be a really big thing. It's going to be really successful. This is a woman I've never met. I met her like thirty five minutes earlier, and so by now I'm sitting up and putting on my robe and I'm saying, but I haven't told anyone about those stories. Had not my husband, not my children, none of my friends, which meant that, you know, I couldn't just pass it off as oh, you know, you're just You've got this from somewhere. And so she said yeah. She had tears in her eyes and she said, I can see She said everyone's telling you to do it.

6:20 And I said, who's everyone. She said, your guides, they're all in the room here. She said, I can see an angel on top of your head. I mean, I don't know, I'll never know, but you know, she said, you have to do this, and so of course I didn't start on it right away, but I did. Eventually we moved from Washington and I started concentrating on kids and on ecoscience, and I you know, the storytelling, I found was always the best way to get kids interested, to get them curious. We were talking about this earlier and Doric kids need to be interested if they're going to learn, not bored. So the storytelling was sort of the way to start talking about this stuff. And the novels.

7:03 So I'm now on my fourth novel. They're selling all around the world, and i'm writing my fifth. Actually i've just launched my fourth, which is what i'd love to do a shout out about today. Maybe later, But yeah, I think there's been times over the last ten years where I've thought where I've been failing, as you know, or I just haven't been selling books, or it's just been too hard, and I've said I think I would have definitely quit if it hadn't been for this one kind of mystical experience, which I still my mind goes back to all the time that somehow I couldn't see anyone. I don't know, she might have just been messing with me. But anyway, here I am ten years later and I'm doing it.

7:44 I think that's awesome and good for you that you took that aha moment and really went for it with your books. You have that mission of raising awareness about the climate crisis and pollution and things like that, and you decided to do it through fantasy fiction. So how have you balanced those two elements, the fantasy with the facts. Yeah, that's a really fair question, because I am doing fantasy fiction. Well, when I say, the official genre is called realistic science fantasy fiction, but you know that's a mouthful, But basically I had to figure out because you know, climate change, extreme weather, plastic pollution, these are real of these are real urgent problems, right, So it's not the world of fantasy we're talking about. So how do you depict these in a novel for children in a way that speaks truth but also is also accessible to them?

8:47 And I decided the only way really to do that was to approach it through the imagination. So for nine to twelve year olds, I mean, there is a scary stuff, you know, deforestation. I remember my kids trying themselves to sleep when they heard at school about the Amazon rainforest areas the size of twenty football fields being fell in half an hour, and different things, you know, extreme weather, floods, wildfires, you know, people losing their homes. This is real stuff and it's quite scary for kids. So what I decided was I knew that, and I had some time to think about it. I was working with these science education clubs that I started in Greece, and I knew climate change would have to be the villain. But how do I make it a villain in a way that's compelling and fair? And you know, there are many ways that we can tell the truth to children, and I think that fantasy is just sort of another way of approaching, you know, the truth about how we treat each other, how we treat the world. I did Saloman Rushdi, the famous author some of your audience probably are aware of him.

9:52 I did his master class because I needed to get back to sort of learning how to write again and I still remember vividly one of the things he said when he was talking about what kind of story are you going to tell? And how is the best way to tell it? I mean, just because I'm modeling now the stories. So in my books, I want my children in the books, the characters. I want them to feel like they're in a world that's a lot like our world. But I've got this fantastical overlay which is representative of climate change in the extreme weather. What I had to do was create a monster. So I've created a monster, sort of demon class, warrior class, a pantheon of monsters.

10:33 I was living in Greece. I called them anthrogs. I took the word anthropost, which comes from the generic Greek word for humankind, and I put it together with hog as no offense to pigs, but as a sort of symbol of over consumption and greediness and the way we use and take more than we need. So these anthrogs were born. And I got this kind of verification from Salman Rushti when he said, sometimes the truth doesn't have to sort of come dressed up as facts. It can come even on a flying carpet. And he said, you know, if you're writing a little book about a boy with a lamp, Sometimes you need a flying carpet. So I was writing a book about kids in an eco school.

11:20 They come from everywhere. It's the top secret school for the most ecodemic kids of the world. So it's this secret away school, and I wanted these kids to have to face up to these monsters. I wanted monsters that were smart, that would you know, they'd have to fight them, and they'd have to find ways to come up against them. So these monsters are kind of like my flying carpet, if that makes sense. I've kind of scuttered around your question a bit, but basically I created a monster which is berthed out of garbage dumps or berthed out of landfill. The current book that I've just launched, it's actually a levi And style of monster that grew up in the bottom of the sea and was birthed from microplastics. So that's a blind monster that comes from the dark depths of the sea, and the kid's face up to it in very interesting and compelling ways. So, yeah, fantasy fiction.

12:16 But when people say, oh, so you're world building, I say I'm not world building. When I build the world of my stories. All I have to do is look out the window, or read the newspaper or read the IPCC report on climate and I've got my world. But I've got this fictional overlay, fantastical overlay that helps bring it all to life and maybe helps ignite the imagination of the readers. On that note, I think of what Laurrel just said. We're going to take a quick break, say thank you to our sponsors, and we'll be back here in just a moment. On Word of Mom Radio. She is brave, she is bold, she is you, and we want to tell your story. Are you ready to share your journey with us on Word of Mom Radio?

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13:52 We need your help. Donations are critical in order for us to continue our work. We also need volunteers to help with research and development. Please visit Unsilenced Voices dot org for more information. And we're back here on Word of Mom Radio. We are talking with Laurel Callis about her book Nights Unite and eco anxiety that so many of us are feeling now and the environmental issues, climate change, biodiversity loss, all of these different things that are such a growing concern, especially among our youth because they're the ones who are truly going to suffer the most from it. You have found this way to wead this all into this book and again looking at the reality and the fantasy. Let's talk a little bit about this and what kids are facing and what they you see them doing.

14:53 Yeah, sure, I mean this is quite a subbering subject because eco anxiety, it's real and it's all around us, and it's something that many kids are feeling deeply. And I know in the US. I'm not living in the US now, but I have lived there, and there's lots of there are a lot of data points that are quite disturbing about how many kids really are suffering. I mean, I'm not a psychologist, but one of the things that I've sort of learned from researching and talking to children is that the sadness comes from the disconnect or the gap that children often feel between the kind of things they might learn at school, or they might learn from watching television or reading books about the climate crisis, for example, or about the dire state of the oceans. You know, by twenty fifty, we may have more plastic than fish in the Atlantic Ocean if we carry on the way we're going. So they hear these things, and they read these things, and then they look, they go home, they and they see, you know, what the adults are doing or not doing about it. I think this is I'm oversimplifying it, of course, but they feel a sense of powerlessness if they see that the leaders, their parents, even you know, adults in their communities, in their churches or in their after school clubs. If they see that those grown ups are not taking action, they feel a really

16:25 overwhelming sense of powerlessness in some cases. So I guess I want to with my stories and also talking to you now remind the moms out there that there's lots of ways that we can help with channeling these feelings of despair into action and hope, and they can be done really simply. If you're I don't see it depends where you're in terms of your listeners, where they have their own agency. There are mums who, for example, have after school programs with kids, or maybe teaching at Scouts or doing something with the church, or where you're maybe coaching a sports team. You can find different ways to put a sort of echo overlay onto your events. Make a zero net emissions a game, or just everyone car pools or ride your bikes, or find a way to get a solar light on the side of the field.

17:16 Do something just fun and a bit innovative so the kids start to get there, get inspired and feel like they're part of the solution. Or have a clothing swap. Find ways to go circular with things, you know, with items that you're buying or selling or recycling, you know, just do it together with the kids and make them feel empowered. These small things can actually make a huge difference. And then on a more sort of high level. I don't know if you've noticed, Dottie, but there's been quite a few lawsuits in the last five six years, particularly with the US taking the lead. I mean, I love this, you have these kids who are taking the lead. The most famous one that I've read a bit about that you probably know something about too, was called Juliana versus the US, and that was children led and it went all the way to the Supreme Court, trying to hold leaders accountable for decision that they're making around fossil fuel investment.

18:17 For example, there was one in Montana which was finally resolved in December twenty twenty four, where actually the court, the Supreme Court in Montana upheld on behalf of the children. These are children like nine to eighteen in class actions accusing governments of investing in fossil fuels without taking into account their right to a clean and healthful environment in the future. There was another one in Hawaii. There are a lot in Australia, some really high profile ones in Australia too, where kids are taking corporations top court looking at their sustainability reports and holding them accountable for promises, mostly around pollution and fossil fuels. But this kind of thing can be really empowering, and I have tried to weave it into my tales. I mean, the last book that has just come out in December last year has one of my characters. She's quite timid, and she's suffering from the ego sadness, and in a very unusual and kind of well I think, surprising way, she takes on one of the monsters and she has a big impact on the outcome of the story, and at the end she's feeling much better, and she says helping helped. So the fact that she could be part of the solution and stand up and take action really helped deal with this sense of disempowerment that I was talking about earlier.

19:42 It's kind of remarkable to me because kids are so aware and you were saying about watching adults and ment. You mentioned church, and I will never forget being at a church lunch and we cook for a homeless shelter. And here we. Are having this lunch and I went in, I was helping clean up, and they got ready to scrape all the food into the garbage that was left overnight. I just was like, excuse me, did we not just cook for the homeless. We had all of these containers. I packaged up every bit of the food good on you fixed families of four, families of two, and people who are single to be able to take home. I just looked and I'm thinking to myself, I can't even think of how many times we have luncheons and you guys just throw this food away. It's to me so hypocritical to be talking about one thing and then in this same breath throwing stuff away. Oh my gosh. And our kids do see this.

20:37 Yeah they do. But maybe these you know, your colleagues or the people at the church, they just weren't thinking. They were just taking that had already done their bit. But yeah, kids can really hold us accountable too, con't they. You know what, I'm serious, and it's important. You know. My grandson always joked with me, Mimi, it takes you a whole month to have a bag of garbage, and I said, yeah, it does, because I compost this and this was some insight on you. Is this and that's that? Then? So it would it would take me a whole month to just have one bag of garbage to finally throw away. And I'm a throw it away or half a bag of garbage because no food, isn't it, nothing's gonna smell. But we do. Kids learn by what they see, and we were talking about children's literacy and the importance of reading, and again the things that you are addressing with your book, because kids learned by what they see.

21:29 So it's rough and in fact, literacy is a kind of foundational theme for me. I mean, obviously I'm writing books, and you know, my own children, they started moving away from books, spending so much time on their phones and it's really disturbing. And actually, before I came on today, I had a quick look at some statistics from last year in the US on kids reading, and it's quite sobering. I have to say. This is the study from your National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is kind of like what you call in the US the nation's report card, And the number that jumped out at me is forty percent of fourth graders are now scoring below basic reading proficiency fourth graders. How old is a fourth grader? It's someone should be right, probably ten. Yeah, my target audience, I'm targeting nine to twelve year olds, partly because the nine to twelve year olds they still love the storytelling and they still feel the magic of nature. But anyway, forty percent. So then another troubling number was this, thirty nine percent of nine year olds and only seventeen percent of thirteen year olds say that they read for enjoyment or they read almost every day. So that and it's the boys that are falling away faster as well. And that's so sad because well, I mean, I don't want to I don't want to start preaching. But we were talking earlier that something really special had when a child

23:01 opens a book. Yeah, compared with looking at streaming, I think that streaming still can be great, you know, for the imagination and some great stories out there on you know, I'm not dissing that. I'm just saying, when you open a book, the brain has to work, as we all know this with the brain has to work much harder. The child has to really go in deeper. The brain has to create the characters, visualize them, imagine their voices. It's so much better for developing your creativity and your imagination to be reading a book. And also when you read a book for children, I think it's so important, at least for me when I was eleven, I can still remember closing the door and getting into my bed with my jamies and opening a book and being had this feeling of being somewhere else, being inside someone else's mind, or being inside other characters' minds, and it was very important when I found a character that was like me.

23:57 That was a really important thing. And I try to do this in books. I have, you know, a lot of diversity, kids from everywhere. They all look different. It's like an international school meets a secret academy kind of thing. I also think it's very important when a child what comes across characters who think very differently, that's so much. It's so important for expanding our minds and for developing critical thinking and getting access to other ways of thinking, other opinions, and also just having a load of fun getting out of yourself and out of your bedroom and getting somewhere else and having fun and going on adventure. And that's so good for the brain, and it's so good for just developing and growing as a human being, in my opinion, So for all the moms out there, you know, our mission has to be to get our kids reading more. It's not easy, though. I don't think we're competing with so many other devices. I don't know if you've heard of any tips. Some I've heard of mothers paying their children to read a novel.

25:00 It's funny. My daughter, like her mommy was an avid reader. My son's not so much. So you know what, I got magazines that I knew they'd love to read sports. I didn't care what they were reading, as long as. They were reading. And then my oldest read this book I want to say, White Fan, but I could be wrong. And it was something he had to read for school. And I went to say good night to him and he was still reading, and I said, damn, it's time to go to sleep. He goes, no, I can't put this book down. I have twenty pages. I have to finish reading this. He said, now I understand how you get lost in a book. Oh my gosh. I walked out like on fairy Ways.

25:44 We're so excited that he finally understood. And then I bought them kindles. My daughter wanted the books, but I've got them for my sons. My middle son still has the same kindle. I said, don't you want to know? And he goes, works great, but I get to have a book with me anywhere. I go, oh, well done, you you. Know what, Well done them though, I mean I tried to model, but you can't force helimate. But you help them develop the heabit. Yeah, yeah, that's a lifetime heit. It is a lifetime habit. And it's so funny because my daughter's a world traveler and would have her case of books that she would pack as she traveled, and last year she said, Mom, I broke down. You know, I had to get in my try. She said, I have my books. I ship them home because when I'm home, I want to read a book. And I'm like, good for you, it's about time that you did that. That's why I asked my guests because I'm always going to read your book. I'm going to talk to you about your book if I haven't read your book. But I asked people to send me a PDF or an e book or whatever, because I might read eight books a month depending.

26:50 Okay, well, i'd love you to read my book. The target you'd have to write, you're eleven year old self. Yeah, no, no. You know what, Hey, it was a good book. It was a good book. It's a good story, and it's something I'm that I find really important and so you have this whole Peter Blue series. As we're wrapping up, let people know where they can reach out to you to get them. We will have links to them on ward of mom Radio. And what do you want to leave our listeners with, Laurel? Well, Okay, I really would love you to go to my website. I think that's the easiest way, or the books that are certainly available anyway you get your online books, so obviously the Amazon platform, Buns and Noble, but pretty much anywhere. And what I was saying to Tadari earlier is I feel a little bit of an imposter when I'm writing about over consumption and then I'm saying bye bye bye my books. So if you're interested in what I've got to say, and you are interested in going to either a bookstore and getting them to order them or a library so that you can jump into the circular economy and you have the books shared, I would love that too, especially if your kids could go to their elementary school library and have the librarian order a copee so that more than one child could read in one sitting. Or if you do buy it, I'd be thrilled if you passed it on to someone so we keep over consumption in mind and just basically I can

28:22 practice what I'm preaching. But thank you in advance. I would love people to pick up the book and jump into the stories, and I'd love also to hear what your child thought about them with Amazon reviews or any of our good Reads reviews. Would also be even just two or three lines. And even if you didn't like it, I think it's still a data point. I was reading somewhere yesterday that rejection is not a verdict, It's a data point. Don't you love that? Yes? I do so, even if you didn't know what your website is. So the website is my name, which is Laurel Pollis la U I re l co l l e SS dot com. It's Laurel Colis dot com. Or if you want to ping me on LinkedIn or on Instagram or Facebook, I'd love to have a conversation as well, and we can get those links maybe into the chat notes as well.

29:20 Absolutely all of them will be on wordommradio dot com. I encourage you get the book. It's a great book to share with your kids, and it really does make a great combination of fantasy fiction addressing very serious real crisis and elements going on in our world that we have to take responsibility for as the adults. I was a little kid. Robert Kennedy back in nineteen sixty five was talking about if we didn't stop polluting our air in our water, our grandchildren were going to suffer the consequences, and he was right. It's our going to be our grandchildren and our great grandchildren who are going to fight what these past generations have done. Give them the ability and encourage them. It's their world and they have the right to a good, clean world. So Laurel, thank you for sharing your journey with us. Thank you for sharing your book. And again all of her links are going to be live, so I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us. Today I'm Word of Mom Radio.

30:30 Thank you, Dora, thank you so much. It's been my pleasure. And for all of you tuning in, thanks so much for being here. We're going to close out with our fabulous theme song from Smith's Sisters and the Sunday Drivers. So till next time, this is Dori di Carlo saying, go out and create a marvelous you. Bye for now. She is sure, she is sure, she is strang is straw, she is true, is true, she is brase, bray, she is bold, she she is you, she is, she is, she is sure, she is she is strong, is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is bold, she she is you, she is she is she sure of herself. Yes, she takes care of it. Powerful and strong, Yes, she knows who she is, has integrity, woman, strong and true.

31:27 You know her by name. See this woman is you. She is sure, she is strong, is strong, she is true, is true, she is braise, she is bold, she she is you, she is she is, she is sure, she is strong, is strong, she is true, is true, she is braive, she is bold, she is she is you, she is she is adds value and hope. Has proved to be brave. See it's never too late, never time to behave Reaching for dreams doesn't matter. The age believes in herself, unleashed from her cage. She is sure, she is sure, she is strong, is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, is brave, she is she is you, she is she is sure, she is she is strong, she is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is she is you.