Stewards of a Healthy Planet
The Adventures of Captain Polo: Polo and the Yeti follows a polar bear on an adventure who is captured and in danger of being sold to a zoo if he cannot escape and continue his journey. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This is the second book of a trilogy that was originally published as a single title. When I decided to split this story into three separate books, I knew I had to find a cliffhanger on which to end the first book, and the perfect scene was when Polo is captured at sea. This is what inspired the setup in Book 2 starting with Polo escaping in the port of Shanghai, and it was a good way to simultaneously continue the main character’s travelogue into a key geography for topics relating to climate change (both in terms of issues and solutions) whilst maintaining the vital element of fast-paced entertainment required to carry the story along.
Many of the scenes in this part of the book are inspired by Tintin comics, both graphically and in terms of the plot.
Captain Polo may be a polar bear, but he has human characteristics and encounters problems because he is seen as just an animal. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
A fundamental driving characteristic of character development in this first trilogy that carries through all three books is that the initial reaction of most human characters to Polo is surprise or even fear. This is a rational argument denoting the most probable reaction any human would have to suddenly encountering a bipedal polar bear in the most unexpected places. The pattern that immediately unfolds is that those same people quickly realise this is not an ordinary wild animal; Polo’s human traits quickly break through people’s fear and surprise to the point where they see him on their level as a conversant and highly intelligent being. This then allows Polo to interact in a meaningful way to carry the non-fiction elements of the book.
The Adventures of Captain Polo: Polo and the Yeti, I felt, did a good job explaining climate change and global warming to young readers. What is one thing that you hope readers take away from the story?
The main thing I wanted this particular book to communicate to readers is that two of the countries in the world that rank among the highest offenders in terms of causing global warming (China and India) are actually also among the most innovative for climate solutions, whether through public policy, technology, or both. Polo and the Yeti fulfills this purpose and the geography involved also provided me with an opportunity to throw in some messages of wisdom from Eastern religions and spiritual sources, many of which explicitly allude to humans’ responsibility as stewards of a healthy planet.
This is important to me because my readers so far at least tend to be mostly from the Western world, and I want my books to present the reality of climate change while also taking into account the perspective of other parts of the world, particularly in terms of social and technological innovation to mitigate and adapt to climate change. It is important that young readers appreciate they are part of a single world, and not as isolated as they might think from kids their age who live very far away.
When will Book 3 be available? Can you give us an idea of where that book will take readers?
Book 3 is already available! The final installment of the trilogy takes Captain Polo across the Arabian Sea into East Africa, down the River Nile, and on into Western Europe. Polo has many adventures along the way and learns about even more subtle and unexpected facets of climate change, such as the combined impact of global warming and tourism on Masai populations in Kenya and how climate change is, at least in part, at the root of the problematic immigration of desperate refugees from North Africa and the Middle East seeking asylum in Europe. At the end of Book 3 Polo is guest of honor of former President Obama, befriends Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Norton, and makes a new friend in London Zoo…
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Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/03/02/stewards-of-a-healthy-planet/
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