Come on, come and sit down. Listen very quietly
to a story. iI love listening to stories, don't you? I'm mimi and I tell stories.
There was once a girl who lived at the heart of a beautiful forest. Her name was greta.
One morning things weren't quite as they should be. Greta stepped out into her garden and there,
huddled together in the shadow of the trees, were all the animals of the forest. A soft
silvery brown wolf stepped forward, with his tail low to the ground. Please help us,
he whispered. The forest is broken and we don't know where to go. The giants are ruining our home.
The giants had always been there, for as long as greta could remember,
but now they were worse than ever. They were huge, lumbering oafs and they were always busy.
They chopped down trees to build homes. Then they chopped down more trees and built bigger homes.
The houses grew into towns and towns grew into cities. They built factories
and shops and cars and planes. They worked all day and all night until eventually...
There was hardly any forest left. But the greedy giants had forgotten how wonderful the forest was
.They didn't see all the little birds and bugs and butterflies and bears that
trembled in the shadows. And no one told them to stop because everyone was scared of them.
Everyone except Greta. Will you help us? ask the wolf.
Greta looked around her. The animals looked tired, and sad. She had to help them, but how?
Then greta had an idea.
The next morning, Greta went to the middle of the forest
and waited for the giants to come. She stood alone, holding a big sign. The sign said stop!
She waited, and waited. On the first day,
the giants didn't see her, and lumbered on by. And on the second and the third too
but on the fourth day something strange happened. A little boy who had been watching Greta made a
sign and came and sat down next to her. He didn't say much, but Greta knew he felt like she did.
Soon more people and animals saw what they were doing and joined in too.
Before long, a huge crowd filled the forest, stretching out to the city and the roads beyond.
They stood together and waited. The crowd was so huge that the giants were stopped in their tracks.
Please stop! Greta cried. Your greedy behaviour is spoiling our home.
You've broken the trees and trampled the flowers and now the bees and birds have flown away. These
animals are homeless and our forest is dying. After Greta had spoken, everything was silent.
But then, everyone in the crowd began to shout. The smoke from your fires is choking the air!
Please stop cutting down the trees! You can help plant some new ones! And mend my home!
We need to take care of our forest and live together. Will you please try?
they all said. The giants shuffled, and fidgeted, and stomped their feet on the ground.
They were embarrassed and a little bit sad. You see the giants were so busy building,
they didn't see what they were doing to the forest or the animals who lived there.
The giants felt terrible. We're sorry, they said. And they promised to try harder.
So from that day on, the greedy giants weren't so greedy! They slowed down and learned to sit
quietly. They stopped working all the time and instead took up new hobbies. They stopped
chopping down trees and learnt all about gardening and living in the forest. They cooked repaired
tidied and shed and before long, the forest became more beautiful than they could ever have imagined.
This story is inspired by a real girl called Greta Thunberg. When greta was not much older than you,
she found out about something called climate change. This means the world is getting hotter
and hotter and this is causing a lot of damage. Scientists all agree that this rising temperature
is down to human activity. When we burn coal, oil and gas, called fossil fuels something
called carbon dioxide is released into the air and this makes the world warm up. The polar ice
is melting and sea levels are rising. Forests are being chopped down and animals are left homeless.
The earth is already one degree celsius hotter than it used to be. This has resulted in worse
wildfires, storms and floods, and more than one million people living near the coast
have been forced to leave their homes. If we carry on as we are things will only get worse.
Climate change is the biggest crisis humans have ever faced.
Greta knew all of this and she couldn't understand why no one was doing anything
about it. So when she was 15, she went on strike from school, sitting outside the
Swedish government building and holding a sign that said, 'strike for climate'.
Over time people stopped to join her, and now her protest has encouraged children and adults
from all over the world to stand up for climate change too. Greta has spoken to politicians from
many different countries, and in 2019 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The story you have just read has a happy ending, but in the real world, Greta is still fighting
the giants. They might not be easy to see as they are in this book, but they are there
and some of the giants don't want to change their ways. That's why Greta needs your help.
You might think that you are too little, but Greta says no one is too small to make a difference.
And that's Mimi and meee...