Books

What Can We Do?

A book about the simple things kids can do to save Australia’s wildlife.

By Claudia Clark

Hannah Stewart is a 12-year-old from the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales. She is determined to save Australia’s endangered wildlife and aspires to become a veterinarian when she grows up. Through her stories and experiences, she discusses some of the biggest threats facing Australia’s native animals and simple ways that both children and adults can help.

In her adventures, Hannah highlights the importance of giving injured wildlife to a licensed wildlife caregiver, emphasizing that wild animals are not pets and belong in their natural habitats. She explains the importance of checking the pouch of an injured marsupial and demonstrates how to do it properly. Additionally, she offers advice on what to do if you find a bat tangled in barbed wire or an animal suffering from overheating due to the hot climate, among other topics.

Hannah and her classmates dedicate several Saturdays to building possum boxes and planting gum trees for koalas, all in the name of school credit and more. The key takeaway from her stories is that there are straightforward actions anyone can take to help protect Australia’s most vulnerable animals.

Guardians Down Under

The Unsung Heroes Saving Australia’s Vanishing Wildlife

By Claudia Clark

As an American living in Germany, some may question my authority to write a book about the importance of preserving Australian wildlife. However, as a lifelong animal lover, political activist, and author deeply passionate about protecting the Earth and its most vulnerable inhabitants, I feel compelled to address this issue. The devastating fires of 2019, which claimed the lives of an estimated 3 billion creatures in Australia, deeply affected me. This, coupled with my recent fulfillment of a lifelong dream to visit Australia, has solidified my determination to contribute to the protection of these unique critters.

While I would prefer to hop on a plane and relocate to Australia to work as a wild animal caregiver, for many reasons, it is impractical. Therefore, after weeks of soul-searching and shelving a book, I had been researching, I decided to write a book about the importance of educating the public about the need to prioritize securing a safe home for Australia’s native and vulnerable resources before it is too late.

We Are All Berliners

The experiences of the Northern Irish during the IRA struggles and the Eastern Germans during the cold war.

By Claudia Clark

Ever since I first visited Berlin the summer between my junior and senior years of high school in 1990, I fell in love it. The Berlin Wall had been down almost a year that point, but there were remains and evidence of the wall that had divided the city not too long ago. I had always been fascinated with Berlin and the Wall and thought numerous times about writing about it, but I was always stuck on what angle to take. Then, last spring while on vacation in Belfast in Northern Ireland, I became obsessed with the Peace Walls that had been built to divide the Catholic and Protestant populations during the IRA troubles in the 1970s.

Fully realizing embarking on this type of project of comparing the lives and experiences of two cities divided by walls would be a tremendous undertaking, I decided to begin the research project to see if the task were worth undertaking. Over the past several months, I began the long process of collecting, sorting, and reading articles and book on the topic.

Dear Barack

One of the great political friendships of the modern world, as told through key moments that shaped the twenty-first century

By Claudia Clark

Today, we know US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as two of the world’s most influential leaders, together at the center of some of the biggest controversies and most impressive advancements of our time. But while their friendship has been the subject of both scrutiny and admiration, few know the full story.

Faced with the challenges of globalization, the two often clashed over policy, but—as the first Black president and first female chancellor—they shared a belief that democracy could uplift the world. United by this conviction, they would forge a complicated but inspiring partnership.

A story of camaraderie at a global scale, Dear Barack shows that it is possible for political adversaries to establish bonds of respect—and even friendship—in the service of the free world.