Think Like a Forest

Letters to my Children from a Changing Planet

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‘Beautiful and thought-provoking’ Cal Flyn

‘A delightful and important book. Every parent should read this’ Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

How do we raise children in a climate emergency?

What should we teach them - and what kind of future are we preparing them for?

Ben Rawlence began writing to his eldest daughter before she was born, trying to understand what it means to bring a child into a world facing ecological breakdown. Over the next twelve years, these letters – written to his two daughters as they grow – chart one father’s attempt to live with the central contradiction of our age: raising children within a system that threatens all life, including our own.

By turns moving and funny, and always bracingly honest, Think Like a Forest explores love, fear and responsibility in perilous times. Rawlence finds the answers might lie in learning to see the world again through the eyes of a child so that we may embrace interdependence and regain our place in nature. To think like a forest, he shows us, may be the key to how we parent, how we live, and even whether we have a future on our planet at all.

'I loved this book. A gift, not just for the author’s daughters, but for all of us who want to replace ecocide anxiety with the glimmerings of a better future’ Sophy Roberts

‘A thoughtful, tender way to make a map of new and frightening territory’ Jay Griffiths

Climate change is an intergenerational issue: an existential crisis we are bequeathing to our descendants. Ben Rawlence's letters to his daughters grapple with questions of injustice and adaptation - but also celebrate the joy and hope and wonder of small children. Beautiful and thought-provoking
Cal Flyn

Both a moving elegy for our suffering planet, and a persuasive call to arms to the next generation of possible changemakers. I loved this book, its threads perfectly calibrated with a masterful simplicity of tone and epistolary directness. A gift, not just for the author’s daughters, but for all of us who want to replace ecocide anxiety with the glimmerings of a better future. Rawlence is too rigorous a journalist to suggest this will be easy, and too honest a writer to be anything but convincing.
Sophy Roberts

A great taboo of our time - how to talk with our children about the broken world they’re growing up into - is coming to an end. This book marks a notable moment in that necessary transformation. The sensitivity with which Ben Rawlence approaches the topic, in these letters, is lovely to behold. Not least, because he sets out here how this is very much about listening to the young, too.
Emeritus Prof. Rupert Read, author of PARENTS FOR A FUTURE

About Ben Rawlence

Ben Rawlence is the author of The Treeline, City of Thorns and Radio Congo. Rawlence has written for the Guardian, London Review of Books, New York Times, New York Times Book Review, New Yorker and many other publications. He lives in Wales and is the founder and director of Black Mountains College, an institution dedicated to preparing people for the changes to come.

Details

Imprint: Jonathan Cape
Published: 16/04/2026
ISBN: 9781787335257
Length: 240 pages
Price: £20.00

All editions

Think Like a Forest

Letters to my Children from a Changing Planet

Format:

Pre-order:

Climate change is an intergenerational issue: an existential crisis we are bequeathing to our descendants. Ben Rawlence's letters to his daughters grapple with questions of injustice and adaptation - but also celebrate the joy and hope and wonder of small children. Beautiful and thought-provoking

A delightful and important book. Every parent should read this and consider it as a handrail for climate conscious and compassionate 21st-century parenting. Having loved every page I have now begun writing letters to my own young daughters to emulate Ben’s piercing insight and heartfelt example

How do you find the right path when no one has come this way before? This book is a thoughtful, tender way to make a map of new and frightening territory.

Humane, honest and painfully true, Rawlence’s letters to his daughters neatly encapsulate the systemic nature of our current crisis of values, while also shedding valuable light on where we might go and how we might thrive if we can only find a way to change them.

As moving as it is illuminating… a book like no other, a story told through letters written by a loving father to his young daughters as they grow up in an increasingly uncertain world.

These are beautifully written, endearing and hopeful letters which made me laugh and cry... It’s a book for all ages about conversations we all need to have -- and if you don’t know how to start them, there’s a very helpful manual at the back!

About Ben Rawlence

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