_{^{Collage by Abi Andrews}}

Abi Andrews wrote us recently to let us know about a project she’s been working on, highlighting the plight of the glider.

‘If We Care We Can is a freely available digital storybook that follows Acacia, a Squirrel Glider who is cared for by humans before being released and adopted into a wild glider family. The wild gliders take Acacia to Bungabbee forest, where she learns about scheduled logging, and vows to do everything she can to protect her new home. Written by educator and wildlife carer Renata Phelps. 

This was a wonderful project to work on, this time as an illustrator and ‘assembler’, bringing together the work of over 25 artists into collage. It’s a community powered, collaboratively illustrated, educational story with an environmental ethic, and it introduces children to some very charismatic Aussie species. 

And hopefully, it will help our community campaign to save Bungabbee forest, a state forest in northern New South Wales, Australia. The local community is campaigning to get the forest reclassified as a protected area so that it can no longer be logged. It’s an extremely important wildlife corridor connecting the Mackellar Range to the world heritage Border Ranges, where many species are sadly currently in recline due to further fragmentation to their habitat. 

Please share it with children and adults-who-know-children, schools & libraries – we would love for it to be read and shared as much as possible. And we would appreciate some reviews! Tag #ifwecarewecan and let us know what you think.’

The book can be accessed here, and you can follow If We Care We Can on Instagram here.