How to Manage Your Eco-Anxiety: An Empowering Guide for Young People

Grose, Anouchka. How to Manage Your Eco-Anxiety: An Empowering Guide for Young People. Magic Cat Publishing, 2024. 92 p. 978-1419771361. $18.99. MS, HS, AT. ****

Grose takes a psychoanalyst’s approach to helping teens understand what causes their anxiety with regards to the planet Earth and climate change. Throughout the book, there are lists which provide techniques and tools to help young adults cope with their feelings towards the planet, as well as helping them understand other’s feelings, emotions, and actions, whether they align or don’t with the teen’s. Lists also provide activities to encourage young adults to handle their feelings through doing, instead of wallowing. 

How to Manage Your Eco-Anxiety is a well paced, easy to read book that would work well for any young adult or even adult who is conscious of the climate change crisis but doesn’t know how to manage their feelings, know where to start to help alleviate their anxiety, or how to help with the crisis. The audiobook edition is good but the illustrations presented in the print edition are nice and add whimsy to the content. None of the illustrations are used to relay information.

The book includes non-American English vocabulary that may be slightly confusing to American young adults. The author references 20 degrees as a common room temperature without saying which temperature scale they’re using (ie. Celcius). Also, when the author references “football,” it is most likely in reference to what Americans refer to as soccer. Other obvious lingo will probably stick out to most teenagers. The narrator of the audiobook has an Australian accent that may help in adjusting to an unfamiliar vocabulary by an American audience.   

Overall, this title is highly recommended for any middle or high schoolers who express stress and anxiety towards climate change. This might also be a good introduction to anxiety in general while providing a topic that isn’t always associated with “deep feels.”

Jessica Lundin, San José Public Library

Tags: Nonfiction, Climate Change, Anxiety, Self-Help