The boy wakes up one morning to the wrecking sound of demolition. Gone is the large garden opposite, gone are the trees, gone are the fields. Instead they will be replaced by ‘progress’: cranes and concrete, tarmac and towers.

Doesn’t this sound just so very familiar? It could be your story or mine, but it’s Pawlu’s – the main character in an illustrated children’s book called Id-Dar ta’ Faċċata
The story is bleak as the one we’re living, but author Carmel Borg an education professor at the University of Malta, has a solution to our helplessness: faith in the young generation.
Through his book he wants to empower children to view the world around them critically, to visualise a better place and to realise that they can take action. Prof Borg, together with illustrator Steve Bonello, wants children to challenge and question our stark reality, and dream of a more beautiful future.
This is a book for children aged 7 and over and for all grown ups in Malta – for those who cannot take more of the ugliness of overdevelopment but for particularly those who are keen on killing trees.

A protest For Our Trees – specifically the 549 trees which will be uprooted to make way for tarmac – will be held this Sunday, September 28 at 8am in Triq l-Imdina, Attard.