WestportREADS: The Real Impact of Climate Change on Connecticut Shores

Event Details

In this year's WestportREADS selection, All the Water In the World by Eiren Caffall, much of Manhattan is under water due to melting glaciers. Before real life follows fiction, there are ways we can reduce the chances of warming trends. Expanding on this concept is executive director of CIRCA (the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation) James O'Donnell, who will be at the Library to share facts about the effects of climate change on the water levels of the Connecticut shoreline and Long Island Sound.

With projections for future sea levels and the implications of these findings, O'Donnell will add valuable context to the story so we can avoid living in the same urban-aquatic future as main character Nonie and her family.

This event is presented in partnership with Westport's Conservation Department and Sustainable Westport.

About the Speaker

James O’Donnell is professor of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut and executive director of CIRCA (the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation). He earned a BSc in Applied Physics at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland, and an MS and PhD in Oceanography at the University of Delaware. At UConn, he lectures and conducts research on the physical processes that control the circulation, mixing, and waves in the coastal ocean, as well as providing leadership for CIRCA in its mission to assist the towns Connecticut adapt to the effects of climate change.

About WestportREADS

Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.

Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on All the Water in the World, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance not only to read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.

WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.

About All the Water in the World

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister, and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river toward what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they’ve saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story ― with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most ― love and work, community, and knowledge ― will survive.

"When the world collapses, will our love for each other? Eiren Caffall answers the hard questions in this luminous novel. All the Water in the World is a masterful story of a family fighting to not be drowned by a changing world. Each sentence is a treasure. Read this and be changed." — Rene Denfeld, best-selling author of The Child Finder and Sleeping Giants

Climate Change
Marine Ecosystems
All the Water in the World: A Reader's Guide for WestportREADS 2026