Time Travel Adventures: The Future Effects of Climate Change
Jasmeen SIdhu
Artist Statement
Time Travel Adventures is about seven-year-old Sameer, a playful, sweet, curious and worrisome boy who feels a lot of anxiety when he learns about climate change on a school trip and worries about the future when his mother tells him about the lake he was at used to have fish living in the waters.
As his anxiety increases throughout the day he keeps hearing about more and more environmental crises, meanwhile, the adults in his life seem to have little concern. Feeling anxious and frustrated, Sameer tosses and turns in his bed, when his Grandpa comes in wondering what’s wrong.
Sameer is determined to make a difference, and wonders why the adults haven’t fixed this problem. Explaining this to his grandpa, Sameer is shown a time machine by his grandpa, and they go on a journey, where the Grandpa tries to ease Sameer’s worries. They go to the future, the past, and while his Grandpa is able to ease some of his worries, he still wonders “If we all leave it for someone else to fix and keep passing these problems through each generation, we won’t have anything left!” Sameer feels a sense of urgency and figures out ways to help with the climate crisis and to teach others around him.
Often climate change and learning about the environment is brought into school curriculum properly at around 7-10 years old. Often these bring about a lot of worry and usually believe only adults can fix these issues. Readers will be able to identify with Sameer, showing them that even a child can bring about real change and educate even the adults around him who have grown ignorant.
This project was developed over the course of a year, spending the first half on the story and characters and the second half for the environment and illustrations. This is still considered as a work in progress, as someone who has wanted to dive into the world of Children’s Book Illustration, it was a chance to finally attempt both writing and illustrating one as a large project, having previously only done smaller projects relating to picture books. South-Asian representation was important for me in this book because being South-Asian it was almost impossible to see someone who looked like me in the picture books I read. This combined with the issue of climate change which is highly prevalent, I sought to tackle these two major issues through this book.
