Bea and the Lake Monster

‘Bea and the Lake Monster’ is written for our grandchildren. It is designed to offer them hope and a way forward in the perilous world they are inheriting, through the adventure story of a brave little girl and a legendary beast.
Loosely based on the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, the story tells how a little (part-indigenous) girl and a sorrowful Lake Monster set out to heal and reverse the ruin of their valley and, eventually, the whole planet by a heedless industrial civilisation - with the aid of the world’s great legendary beasts.
It is partly an adventure story and partly a parable. It contains both humour and pathos. It offers real, sustainable solutions to the human predicament. It does not ‘talk down’ to the young reader. It is a written book rather than a picture book, though I hope it can be illustrated.
As a science writer, I am at pains to ensure the solutions described in it are realistic and scientifically-based, though this is not described in the text, which simply recounts how one small person can change the world. The solutions are from my book 'How to Fix a Broken Planet' (Cambridge 2023).
As a former newspaper editor, I have made the text as clean, well-edited and print-ready as possible.