Think Like a Forest: Letters to my Children from a Changing Planet

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

‘Beautiful and thought-provoking’ Cal Flyn

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

'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

© Ben Rawlence 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026