For your shelf, your classroom, your program
Each section below is written for the people who acquire, recommend, and program — librarians, teachers, literacy organizations, and youth-book media.
Agency instead of dread #
One of the central challenges in environmental education is no longer simply helping young people understand ecological problems. It is helping them face those problems without leaving them frightened, powerless, or responsible for repairing everything adults have damaged.
Lawrence Nault's fiction for young readers is written against that doom default. The stories begin with dragons, adventure, friendship, danger, and discovery. The ecological and civic questions emerge through what the characters encounter and choose to do rather than through lectures disguised as fiction.
The goal is not to promise that children can solve every crisis. It is to show that understanding, cooperation, observation, and action still matter. For librarians and educators, these are climate-adjacent stories that acknowledge loss without treating despair as the only honest response.
Questions & discussion hooks
- How do you write ecological loss for a twelve-year-old without lying to them or overwhelming them?
- Where is the line between a story with environmental themes and an "issue book"?
- What forms of agency do the characters actually have?
More questions & hooks
- How do the books avoid placing adult responsibilities on young characters?
- What do young readers notice in these stories that adults sometimes miss?
- Which actions in the books could students realistically adapt to their own communities?
- Can a book acknowledge that a problem is enormous while still showing that local action has value?
- How do dragons and mythology make difficult ecological ideas more approachable?
The books do not ask young readers to save the world alone. They show them how to understand the part of it within their reach.
One catalogue, multiple stages of reading #
Nault's fiction spans several stages of reading: the MacIver Kids Adventures for middle-grade and younger teen readers, the Draconim series for teenagers, and clearly identified adult speculative fiction beyond them.
For a librarian, school, or family-literacy program, that creates continuity. Siblings can encounter the same author at different reading levels, and readers who finish one sequence have another body of work waiting as their interests, comprehension, and emotional readiness develop.
The catalogue is not one story rewritten for different ages. It is a reading pathway through related questions about courage, belonging, technology, ecological responsibility, and the worlds one generation leaves to the next.
Questions & discussion hooks
- How should a librarian introduce the series to help readers move between them?
- Which series is the strongest entry point for a reluctant reader?
- What distinguishes the adult fiction from the books intended for younger readers?
More questions & hooks
- What changes when you write related themes for a ten-year-old, a fourteen-year-old, and an adult?
- What remains morally or emotionally consistent across those age groups?
- Which books work best for independent reading, family reading, or group discussion?
- Should readers move through the catalogue by age, reading ability, interest, or emotional readiness?
- Can an older reader still find something meaningful in the books written for younger audiences?
Readers do not age out of the questions; they encounter them at greater depth.
Fingerprints in the Water: fiction built around citizen science #
The third Draconim novel, Fingerprints in the Water, places citizen science at the centre of its story: young people and community members observing local waterways, gathering information, identifying patterns, and using evidence to make ecological harm visible.
The accompanying citizen-science kit creates a direct bridge between fiction and activity. Students can read an environmental fantasy and then investigate the real water systems around them through observation, shoreline surveys, plastic-waste audits, habitat mapping, community research, or participation in established citizen-science programs.
For science teachers, environmental educators, libraries, and community organizations, the book offers a way to move from story to inquiry without turning the novel itself into a textbook.
Questions & discussion hooks
- Why place citizen science inside a dragon novel?
- What can students safely observe without specialized equipment?
- What would a "read locally, observe locally" program look like?
More questions & hooks
- What can fictional characters demonstrate about scientific observation and public participation?
- Which parts of the characters' work have direct real-world equivalents?
- How should educators distinguish meaningful data collection from a one-time classroom demonstration?
- Can fiction create curiosity about science in students who do not identify as "science kids"?
- How can students contribute without being told they are personally responsible for solving water pollution?
- How does community knowledge become part of environmental evidence?
Possible program pathways
- Local shoreline or neighbourhood litter audits
- Watershed mapping
- Plastic-use diaries
- Observation journals
- Habitat and wildlife records
- Identifying local water-governance bodies
- Researching community-monitoring programs
- Comparing fictional evidence gathering with scientific method
- Creating a class question bank for local officials or environmental organizations
- Examining how information becomes civic action
A note on scope: formal water-quality testing may require equipment, safety procedures, permissions, and trained supervision. Observation, mapping, auditing, and partnership with established citizen-science organizations are safer and more accessible starting points for most classrooms.
Read the story, identify the question, then learn how your own watershed can be observed.
Shattered Ice: two poles, one planetary system #
The fourth Draconim novel, Shattered Ice, connects the Arctic and Antarctic through the Two Poles — One Current educational plan. Rather than teaching the polar regions as distant and separate places, the program asks students to examine the systems that connect them: ocean circulation, climate, wildlife, pollution, resource extraction, melting ice, and decisions made thousands of kilometres away.
The novel gives students characters and consequences through which to approach those systems. The educational plan then widens the frame, moving from individual places and events toward planetary connections.
For science, geography, environmental studies, and language-arts programs, Shattered Ice offers a way to explore how distant ecosystems are linked — and how communities far from either pole remain part of the story.
Questions & discussion hooks
- Why should students study the Arctic and Antarctic together rather than as separate units?
- How are communities far from the poles connected to changes happening there?
- What do dragons and mythology add to subjects usually taught through maps, graphs, and scientific reports?
More questions & hooks
- What does Two Poles — One Current help students see that a conventional polar-regions lesson may miss?
- How are the two poles connected through ocean and climate systems?
- What is the difference between sea ice and land ice, and why does it matter?
- How does pollution travel beyond borders?
- What role do wildlife and migration play in understanding polar change?
- How do you move students from local experience to planetary systems without making the problem feel impossibly large?
- How can the book be used across science, geography, language arts, and civic education?
Possible program pathways
- Comparing the Arctic and Antarctic
- Mapping major ocean currents
- Distinguishing sea ice, glaciers, and ice sheets
- Exploring sea-level change
- Examining polar wildlife and habitat disruption
- Tracing pollution across borders and ecosystems
- Studying resource extraction in polar and near-polar regions
- Connecting local consumption with distant ecological consequences
- Comparing Indigenous, scientific, political, and community knowledge
- Asking who makes decisions affecting places where few decision-makers live
A note on framing: the program examines the two polar regions' real differences — environmental, political, cultural — while showing the planetary systems that connect them. It does not treat them as interchangeable.
One program asks students to examine the water beside them. The other asks them to follow water, ice, and consequence across the planet.
From local observation to global systems #
Together, Fingerprints in the Water and Shattered Ice offer two complementary models of environmental learning.
The citizen-science kit begins locally: observe a shoreline, document a watershed, identify a pattern, and learn how evidence enters public discussion. The Two Poles — One Current plan expands outward: trace how water, pollution, climate, wildlife, extraction, and political decisions connect distant parts of the planet.
Used together, the books move students from the place they can see to systems they must learn to imagine. They also demonstrate that local agency and global understanding are not competing approaches. Students need both.
Questions & discussion hooks
- Why begin environmental learning with local observation?
- Can the books be taught as a sequence?
- How do educators preserve hope without exaggerating the power of individual action?
More questions & hooks
- At what point should students move from local evidence to planetary systems?
- How do the two books prevent "think globally, act locally" from becoming an empty slogan?
- What can students influence directly, and what requires collective or political action?
- How do stories help students connect their own communities to places they may never visit?
- What would a combined literature, science, and civic inquiry unit look like?
A possible combined sequence
- Read a selected section from Fingerprints in the Water.
- Identify the evidence gathered by the characters.
- Conduct a local observation, map, audit, or research activity.
- Examine how local water connects to larger watersheds and oceans.
- Introduce Shattered Ice and the polar systems.
- Trace currents, pollution, wildlife, or climate effects across regions.
- Identify which decisions are local, provincial, national, or international.
- Develop questions for scientists, community organizations, or public officials.
- Create a final project connecting one local observation to one global system.
Start with the water students know. Then show them where it goes.
Access as a publishing principle #
Nault treats access as part of the design of a publication rather than an afterthought. Selected work is released permanently free, civic resources are openly licensed, and books are distributed through channels intended to make them available to libraries and readers beyond conventional bookstore purchasing.
For underfunded schools, small libraries, rural communities, and literacy organizations, format, licence, catalogue availability, and price can determine whether a resource is usable at all.
The argument is not that every creative work should be free. It is that writers and publishers can decide deliberately which work needs the widest possible access and build a publishing model around that purpose.
Questions & discussion hooks
- Why make some books or resources permanently free?
- What should schools and libraries know about accessing your work?
- What does open licensing permit an educator to do?
More questions & hooks
- How do you decide which work should generate income and which should prioritize access?
- What barriers separate young readers from books that publishers often overlook?
- How can an independent author make library acquisition easier?
- How do free digital access, library lending, and paid print editions fit together?
- How do you protect the value of creative labour while removing barriers for particular projects?
- Should educational extensions be treated differently from the books themselves?
Title-by-title access chart: a chart listing each title's formats, price, licence, and library-platform availability is being finalized and will be published on this page. Until then, ask via the contact form — access questions are answered directly. Books are available through participating library platforms; availability varies by service and region.
Access does not require pretending creative labour has no value. It requires choosing where the barrier belongs — and where it does not.
An author visit from the Badlands — without the travel budget #
Working from rural Alberta led Nault to build much of his public practice around distance. Virtual author visits allow classrooms, libraries, homeschool groups, and reading programs to bring in an author without airfare, hotels, or geographic limits.
The sessions can extend beyond a conventional reading: ecological storytelling, world-building, citizen science, polar systems, writing across genres, working with animals, documentary filmmaking, or the unconventional route from blacksmith and farrier to author and researcher. The value is not simply that the visit is virtual. It is that the format can be adapted to the age group, book, curriculum connection, and questions students are already exploring.
Session formats
- Story and Q&A — a short reading followed by student questions about characters, dragons, ecological themes, animals, or the writing process
- From a Real Problem to a Fictional World — how research into water, wildfire, pollution, climate, technology, or ecosystems becomes setting, character, conflict, and myth
- Citizen Science and Storytelling — using Fingerprints in the Water to connect fictional investigation with local observation and environmental evidence
- Two Poles — One Current — using Shattered Ice to explore the connections between the Arctic, Antarctic, ocean currents, wildlife, pollution, and human decision-making
- Writing Animals Without Turning Them Into People — observation, voice, behaviour, empathy, and the choices involved in writing from an animal's perspective
- You Do Not Have to Pick One Thing — a career-and-creativity session drawing on writing, blacksmithing, farriery, technology, filmmaking, podcasting, and independent research
Questions & discussion hooks
- What does a virtual author visit actually include?
- How do sessions change for different age groups?
- What do young readers ask that adults rarely do?
- What would you tell a student who believes a creative life must follow one straight path?
- Can a visit be linked to a specific book, science unit, environmental theme, or writing assignment?
- What preparation should students do beforehand?
- Can the session work for students who have not yet read the book?
- Can schools combine a reading with one of the educational kits?
Booking details: grade ranges, session lengths, group sizes, technical requirements, accessibility arrangements, recording policy, supervision requirements, and pricing are being finalized for the coming school year. Enquire via the contact form to discuss a visit — enquiries are answered directly and shape what gets built.
Distance should determine the format of the visit, not which students get access to it.
Writing animal loss for families: Laird in the library #
For many children and families, the death of an animal is their first direct encounter with grief. Libraries are often asked for a book that acknowledges that loss without trivializing it or forcing it into an easy lesson.
Nault's grief memoir, Laird: Between Him and the Dark, narrated by Laird, is written primarily for adults. Its perspective on attachment, vigilance, caregiving, decline, and absence may also make it useful to older teens, parents, caregivers, and professionals supporting a grieving family.
This is not a general children's grief title or an automatic classroom text. It is a resource a librarian may keep in mind for the right reader, with clear age and content guidance. Its free availability lowers an access barrier, but does not by itself establish suitability for children.
Questions & discussion hooks
- Who is the intended reader for Laird?
- How should a librarian decide whether the book is appropriate for a younger reader?
- Is this a book to display, catalogue as memoir, or recommend personally?
More questions & hooks
- Why can an animal narrator sometimes make grief easier to approach?
- What does the dog's perspective allow the book to say about care and loss?
- What should adults avoid saying to a child who has lost an animal?
- How can families talk about a book like this together?
- Why is it important not to promise that grief will resolve neatly?
Suggested lanes: adult and family collections · older teen readers · parent and caregiver resources · veterinary grief-support lists · counsellor awareness · guided family reading where appropriate.
The book does not explain grief away. It gives families another voice through which to approach it.