ReadItDaddy's Chapter Book of the Week - Week Ending 6th September 2019: "Greta's Story: The Schoolgirl Who Went On Strike to Save the Planet" by Valentina Camerini, Veronica Carratello and Moreno Giovannoni (Simon and Schuster Children's Books)

Kid-friendly biographies are definitely a growing trend in the children's publishing market that we're really happy to see. One of the major criticisms we've had in the past is that these books don't often cover the folk that kids actually want to know about. But in this case, for our Chapter Book of the Week this week, Simon and Schuster have published something that's bang on the nail  and timely.

"Greta's Story: The Schoolgirl Who Went On Strike to Save the Planet" by Valentina Camerini, with illustrations by Moreno Giovannoni and translation by Veronica Carratello details the amazing young girl who has a lot of folk rattled - but folk who need to be rattled, shaken out of their greedy excess, and given a thorough wake up call - that our planet is dying, and we're doing very little to stop it.

Greta Thunberg, at 15, began a movement that has now gained traction worldwide. She started to stage protests in her home country of Sweden, striking one day a week and protesting outside the Swedish parliament buildings in order to raise awareness of climate change and ecological issues unfolding not just in her own country but across the globe.

Since then, Greta has become a measured and brilliant spokesperson for an entire generation of kids who are fed up to the back teeth with what complacent adults are doing to their world. Greta's heartfelt speeches and her appearances in public and on media networks have become a rallying cry as children not only stage their own school strikes and protests in many countries across the world, but also have been doing their bit to make the planet a better place to live in, staging activities from planting trees to picking up litter, and to telling their parents to be a bit more conscious about plastic waste and recycling.

She's a hero - and we love the fact that she upsets big fat white businessmen who seem to think it's their place to criticise her methods. Whenever she speaks, I'm always reminded of a tiny scene in Christopher Nolan's last Batman film where Catwoman says "How did you think you could get away with having it so good for so long, without consequence". This biography is inspirational stuff, giving kids even more reason to admire and respect this diminutive but mighty young girl.

Sum this book up in a sentence: A truly fantastic chronicle of Greta's struggle to make her voice heard in a world that needs to listen to her, and her generation a lot more when it comes to environmental and ecological issues.

"Greta's Story" by Valentina Camerini, Veronica Carratello and Moreno Giovannoni is out now, published by Simon and Schuster Children's Books (Kindly supplied for review).