Upstream
Noor’s classmates have nicknamed her ‘Greta Thunberg’, but she has more on her mind than just the climate
Noor’s mum and dad are fanatical about the environment. That means: no planes, eating vegetarian food, staging playful protest activities and having planning meetings in the living room. This way of life has always been completely natural to Noor. But now that she’s expected to make a fool of herself by dressing up in a homemade polar-bear costume at the next demonstration and no one has even asked her if she actually wants to do it, she decides that enough is enough.
Noor’s rebellious brother mainly sees the fun of the protest actions. He puts lentils into valve caps, so that car tyres slowly deflate, and glues his own stickers onto traffic signs. As a result, he successfully reduces the speed limit of cars in the neighbourhood. In the supermarket where he works, he neatly arranges environmentally friendly products where they can easily be seen – and messily pushes everything else to the back of the shelves.
Noor, though, has recently started high school, and she no longer wants to spend all day worrying about a grim future. She’s tired of her classmates calling her Greta Thunberg – and she has other things than the environment on her mind now, such as her opinionated new classmate, Tim.
Noor’s mum and dad are concerned about her moping and grumbling, so they send her to a summer camp for vulnerable children to help her learn how to set her boundaries. She promptly decides to do exactly that, setting some boundaries of her own – just not in the way that her family expects. When they drop her off at the railway station, she doesn’t take the train to the summer camp but instead sneaks away to hide for a week at her favourite swimming spot by the river.
Marc ter Horst has made a successful move from scientific books for children to fiction. This is a hopeful, funny and courageous story, which raises a fair question: does all the attention to the climate, to which he has himself contributed with his previous books, perhaps weigh a little too heavily on children’s shoulders? Ter Horst has come up with an unconventional, bold and optimistic response.
Age: 12+
“A hyper-contemporary, provocative, humorous YA novel about a rebellious adolescent and parents who are (too?) climate conscious.”
“A rich, intense and moving story that will definitely appeal to readers of twelve and up.”
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