The day of the purpose-built children’s information book is over. Facts about dinosaurs? How to care for your guinea pig or draw cartoons? School projects on the Gold Rush? Kids are not turning to books for this information any longer. It is faster, more current, more interactive, and more fun to get it online. (Whether the results are more reliable is debatable.)

This change means that juvenile non-fiction is reinventing itself with some intriguing results. One trend is the revival of the story-based information book, with fictional characters and a narrative shape. Another is experimentation with book design. Do we attempt to replicate the point-and-click look of a web page or go in some entirely new direction? A third trend is books that explore interdisciplinary subjects, topics not easily summarized in a subject heading.

Science writer Peter Christie’s The Curse of Akkad is an example of all three trends. It is a mosaic of information on climate science, archaeology, and history – prehistoric, ancient, and modern – with small detours into mythology, the visual arts, and literature. The text focuses on the role of climate change as it relates to such varied topics as the evolution of homo sapiens, the rise and fall of the Harappan civilization, the Black Death, the Spanish Armada, the 1941 Battle for Moscow, and why Stradivarius violins are unique.

Each section begins with a narrative vignette. Some feature real people, such as 19-year-old Barbara Gobel, who was burned as a witch in 1626 after being accused of causing the abrupt climate change in that period, which marked the dawn of the “Little Ice Age.” Others focus on fictional characters, such as a Neanderthal girl who encounters a band of homo sapiens for the first time. Snippets of historical records let us overhear real voices from the past: a Connecticut clockmaker in 1816 complains about having to wear thick woollen clothes in midsummer, unaware that the freezing temperatures were caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the previous year.

Linking these small stories are articles that explain the science behind El Niño, and how the “Medieval Warm Period” made it possible for the Vikings to settle Greenland. Scattered throughout the text are also little lollipops of information on the revival of winemaking in Britain, the downfall of Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie, the role of climate in the writing of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and how a Scottish janitor first proposed that the Earth’s orbit may have caused the ice ages.

The book ends with a sobering look at the relationship between climate change and armed conflict. The social stresses that result from climate change historically result in war, while the fires and bombs of modern warfare could exacerbate global climate change. Indicative of the serious nature of this book is the impressive bibliography, including very current scholarly articles. The curious reader has plenty of routes to follow.

In tone, Christie is careful. The text is studded with phrases such as “some researchers say it’s possible” and “according to some scientists.” He also finds a balance between Cassandra and Pollyanna, giving doomsday predictions their due but using the broad historical context to demonstrate human flexibility and ingenuity. He avoids preachiness while suggesting several concrete ways we can change as a society.

Christie collects and juxtaposes information to give young readers something they might not find online. Left to our own surfing, we might not find out how the Peruvian economy was based on birdshit, or how Turner changed his colour palette after volcanic activity caused brilliant sunsets in 1815. This is the perfect “Hey, did you know” book.

The Curse of Akkad is less sure-footed, though, in its design and layout. Crowded pages, small photos, and black-and-white illustrations result in an appearance that is disjointed for the close reader and not snazzy enough to attract casual browsers.   

A creative teacher could take this material, gather together the suggested further reading, add some fiction titles such as Peter Dickinson’s A Bone from a Dry Sea, Betty Levin’s Thorn, and Susan Vande Griek’s A Gift for Ampato, arrange a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, and create a whole term’s worth of investigation in science and history. More than ever, we really need such imaginative vision in classrooms because, as Christie puts it, for the first time in history we are throwing our own climate curveball.