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  • Published: 16 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529939002
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

Think Like a Forest

Letters to my Children from a Changing Planet




How to parent in a climate emergency? Through a series of inspiring letters written to his daughters, climate activist and writer Ben Rawlence finds new ways to open conversations and navigate the uncertainty of our changing times together.

How to parent in a climate emergency? What knowledge should we pass on? What future are we preparing our children for?

Ben Rawlence first began writing to his eldest daughter before she was born, expressing his fears at what it would mean to raise a child in a world where the very concept of the future is in jeopardy. Twelve years later, dozens of these letters to his two daughters tell the story of one father’s attempt to navigate the fundamental contradiction of raising children within an economic system that seems hostile to all life, including us.

By turns moving and hilarious, but always bracingly honest, these letters offer relatable and inspiring insights about how to parent in perilous times. Ultimately Rawlence (and his daughters) shows us that learning to see once again through the eyes of a child might hold the answer to how we parent, how we live and even the future of our planet.

  • Published: 16 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529939002
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

About the author

Ben Rawlence

Ben Rawlence is the author of City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp (Granta) and Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War (Oneworld). He grew up in England and studied Swahili at the universities of London and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania) and then an MA in International Relations at the University of Chicago. He worked for Human Rights Watch in Africa for seven years, when he became fascinated by the Dadaab refugee camp, a place that would later become the topic of his 2016 book, City of Thorns. In 2013, Rawlence left his job and devoted himself full-time to writing and speaking. Ben has written for the Guardian, London Review of Books, New York Times, New York Times Book Review, New Yorker and many other publications. He has appeared on BBC News, Channel Four, PBS, Al-Jazeera, CBC and many other TV and radio broadcasts.

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Praise for Think Like a Forest

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

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

Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

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.

Jay Griffiths

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.

Owen Sheers

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