Carrie Firestone
Shares her Passion for Community Activism Through Storytelling
by Michele Appelgate
Carrie Firestone’s passion about the environment and community activism naturally flows throughout her writing. Firestone, a former high school teacher in New York City, launched her fourth book this summer, The First Rule of Climate Club.
The focus is on eighth-grader Mary Kate Murphy when she joins a special science pilot program focused on climate change. The class opens her eyes to lots of things she never noticed before about her small suburban town:
Kids waste tons of food at school without a second thought.
Parents leave their cars running in the pick-up lane all the time.
People buy lots of clothes they don’t really need.
Some of her friends who live in the city and are bused to her school don’t always feel included.
And the mayor isn’t willing to listen to new ideas to fix any of it.
Mary Kate and her friends have big plans to bring lasting change to their community and beyond: they start a podcast on climate activism and organize rallies to create lasting change in their local community and beyond.
The First Rule of Climate Club is a companion to Firestone’s debut novel for middle grade students, Dress Coded, which is about a group of young people who were frustrated and angry about the school dress code. They came together to protest and make changes.
“I try to tackle huge issues but make them accessible and I try to help people,” she said. “I always say I like my books to start conversations. So, there may be characters in the book you don’t agree with or things that happen in the book that may be controversial, but that, to me, is a good thing. That starts conversations and that gets book clubs riled up and ready to talk.”
Firestone sees this as a step-by-step resource, in the form of a novel, to help readers who are struggling with climate change. She wants to offer them tools, a guide, so they don’t feel anxious or overwhelmed by such a big topic. “Kids don’t need to be in the weeds. They need to be empowered. I want them to know they absolutely can make a change,” Firestone says. “This is an environmental justice book. It’s for young readers and adults. I’ve done a lot of anti-racist work these past few years in my community and with other organizations. So, when I set out to write this book, I was like, I can’t really write a climate book without trying very hard to make it an anti-racist climate book, because I would be doing a disservice to environmental justice. So, that was a piece that I tried to get right and hopefully I did.”
There is a subplot, too, as Firestone explained, “This is another important topic for me and that is the connection between climate change and lyme disease. That’s still a huge issue in Connecticut, where I live. This book also teaches you how to be a good friend with someone with a chronic disease.
As a long-time community leader, Firestone spent a lot of time worrying about things like poverty, environmental destruction, and war even when she was a child. She eventually learned to channel that worry into action through teaching, storytelling, civic engagement, and project-based service work.
Her writing inspiration comes from real-life situations she experiences or observes.
“I’ve always been a writer. It wasn’t until I turned 40 that I decided I would actually finish a book and submit it,” Firestone said. “I don’t write every day like many writers. I have long periods of time just living life. When something hits me, I write about it.”
Drawing on her years of teaching, Firestone enjoys tackling issues that seem overwhelming to people and helping them deal with them.
“I love the feeling of connecting with people. I want to have as many people read the book as possible, but more than that, I want the people meant to read the book to read it and to really connect with it on a level that changes them in some way,” she says.
“So, when I get a letter from someone that says they were feeling so upset about their dress code, and then they read my book and reached out to their friends and started to petition and took action—to me that is a win. It’s like this kid was meant to read this book to help her move forward with her activism. Having an impact, those moments of connecting with readers, that’s what I like. We have these beautiful moments. That’s my favorite part of being a writer.”
Firestone lives in Connecticut with her husband Michael, her teen daughters, and their pit bull, Roxie. She loves connecting with the world through travel, researching little pieces of fascinating history, and finding ways to inspire environmental stewardship and social justice work at the local level.
Learn more about Carrie Firestone at carriefirestonebooks.com or follow her on Twitter @CLLFirestone or on Instagram @carriefirestoneauthor.