Project F by Jeanne DuPrau (The Books of Ember series) is a gentle and affecting children's solarpunk novel about a 13-year-old boy's misadventures with a mysterious (and dangerous) technology.
Keith Arlo lives with his parents in sustainable and peaceful Cliff River City, one of only seven surviving cities on Earth. Fossil fuels have been banned and much of the planet is covered in wild natural areas from which humans are forbidden. When the family receives word that Keith's aunt and uncle have died in a tragic accident, Keith sets off to retrieve their daughter, Lulu. On the steam train to Sandwater City, Keith meets a man named Malcolm, who informs Keith that he's working on a covert engineering endeavor called Project F. After an accidental baggage mix-up leads Keith and Lulu to the Project F headquarters, Keith finds himself caught up in the machinations of a shortsighted plan that aims to revolutionize travel and foster freedom--but may destroy the world in the process.
Project F is a thoughtful, urgent meditation on the origins and dangers of climate change. DuPrau employs an empathetic and lighthearted tone to translate the threatening nature of climate catastrophe into simple, declarative prose. The author engages deeply with charged topics but does so in a way that avoids fear mongering and didacticism. Instead, she invites readers to critically evaluate the world and what it would mean to exist sustainably: a world painted lush greens and sea blues, where cars and planes are abandoned in remote graveyards, and steering wheels become little more than a convenient perch for goldfinches and chickadees. --Cade Williams, freelance reviewer