CARL HIAASEN'S FLUSH (2005) addresses one of the key issues of our time: environmental degradation. His story offers children opportunities to think about how to act and behave in the face of environmental challenges and serves as an argument against prioritizing capitalism over the environment and humanity (Klein, 2014; Lewis, 2015). Flush is funny and irreverent, and it positions children in complex situations as both agentive and lacking control as they contend with family and environmental problems in the Florida Keys. Current theoretical and media representations of environmentalism advocate for understanding the human side of environmental issues in addition to ecological impacts (Buell, 2009; Garrard, 2004; Heise, 2008; Klein, 2014; Lewis, 2015). Geologists have argued for the declaration of a new Anthropocene epoch due to the clear evidence that humanity has forever altered our planet (Carrington, 2016). Research in children's literature must consider lenses that keep people in the foreground when exploring environmental issues. Researchers and educators must consider what children's books can and should mean for children fighting for their futures.Environmental collapse poses one of the most serious threats to modern life the world has seen. Historic and ongoing disregard for land and human life (Klein, 2014; Lewis, 2015) have led to what are known as "sacrifice zones" (Lerner, 2010)-those people and places impacted by environmental or economic devastation, sacrificed to outside environmental and economic interests. People in sacrifice zones are often unheard or silenced by those not experiencing the effects or living within the zones. Traditionally, people in relatively stable economies, such as many in the United States, understand these zones as far away, removed from their experiences of economic and physical safety. However, with anthropogenic climate change posing increasing challenges to the globe, those living in sacrifice zones are becoming more vocal and visible-spurred by focused activism against indifference to environmental and economic disaster. We see examples of this in the number of nations who agreed to the Paris climate accord in 2015 (Davenport, 2015), and perhaps even more so in the grassroots support for the Indigenous activists at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in 2016 (Skalicky & Davey, 2016; Treuer, 2016).The definition of sacrifice zones has become fuzzier as people not traditionally living in these areas begin to recognize that such places and people exist close to home, too. Major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have taken many lives and devastated communities. In 2012, deadly Superstorm Sandy crashed into the global economic capital. In addition, governments continue to sanction infringement on Native lands (e.g., Treuer, 2016), and there is ongoing and continual degradation of urban spaces like Flint, Michigan (e.g., Smith, 2016), and natural spaces like the Gulf of Mexico (e.g., Mouawad, 2010). Those with historic privilege stemming from skin color, economic standing, and geographic locale, among other things, can no longer lean on conventional conceptions of what counts as a sacrifice zone to deny adverse impacts on human lives and the environment both near and far. While experienced differentially across locales, sacrifice zones do not have discrete boundaries; those with historic privilege, too, are living in sacrifice zones.Children's Literature in Sacrifice ZonesPopular today in children's literature, and perhaps even more so in young adult literature, are futuristic tales of dystopian wastelands, stories that spring from either Orwellian fears, as in Piers Torday's The Last Wild (2013), or government collapse, as in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993). Hammer (2010) describes such dystopian stories as a means of confronting ecological futures; disaster fiction and refugee journeys of a future society offer not so fantastical voyages that create cultural pressure and imagined futures for young readers. …
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