Climate Literacy Opportunities and Critique in Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Paradise on Fire (2021) by Jewell Parker Rhodes is one of a growing number of climate fiction young adult novels that offers readers opportunities to engage with concepts of climate literacy, environmental justice, and environmental racism. Much of ecocriticism is premised on the idea that when readers critically engage with texts centered on environmental and climate challenges, the reading experience serves to build understanding and empathy for climate emergencies and human-caused climate change. Arguably, children’s literature has the same potential to affect readers’ perspectives, beliefs, and actions as other forms of text. This article offers a close reading of the novel through the lens of Marek Oziewicz’s framework of climate literacy. The analysis explores the author’s craft in highlighting the complexities of environmental justice and environmental racism, held in conversation with the climate literacy notions of care for and belonging within nature spaces.