This interview originally appeared in the January/February 2026 Horn Book Magazine as part of the Publishers’ Previews: New Year, New Books, an advertising supplement that allows participating publishers a chance to each highlight a book from its current list. They choose the books; we ask the questions.

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A journalist and a graphic novelist find common cause in A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis.

Meera Subramanian photo (L): CC Boyle Photography; Danica Novgorodoff photo (R): Jonathan Farmer.

1. Meera, how has creating this book changed you?

I’ve learned the joy of collaboration while gaining inspiration from the youth featured. Their ability to find a way toward action gave me an infusion of — dare I say? — hope!

2. Danica, same question.

I learned about how to find community around climate action. As youth organizer Shiv said: “All you have to do is show up…The only way to be involved is to be there.”

3. Danica, what most hopeful thing about the future did Meera teach you?

There are solutions to the climate crisis everywhere. Technological innovations, renewing connections with the land, clean energy, redesigning cities, reducing waste, taking political action…

4. Meera, what most helpful thing about graphic-storytelling did Danica teach you?

How much more you can say with a few words. Or no words! When Danica drew me stepping out of a frame as she offered me a hand into her frame, it spoke vol-umes about how we’ll get through the climate crisis and eco-grief: together.

5. Which writers’ work keeps you going in this dark world?

DN: James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Rebecca Solnit: “To hope is to give yourself to the future — and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.”

MS: Bill McKibben’s Here Comes the Sun, the voices curated by Ayana Elizabeth ­Johnson in What If We Get It Right?, and Samantha Harvey’s Orbital.

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