Paton Walsh uses the theme of a future world very differently in two of her novels: The Green Book and Torch.

Both novels take place after man's destruction of the world. In The Green Book the families who have to flee the Earth are very sophisticated and literate; they have all of the modern technology and knowledge necessary to make themselves comfortable on a strange planet. The group that travels to this planet have been handpicked because together they comprise the skills and the mixture to survive and multiply in a new environment. In Torch, all of the sophistication and knowledge are gone after the nuclear war. There is little memory of the past, therefore the people are "struggling along, knowing nothing, having almost nothing, and troubled all the time, disturbed by knowing what people once had, what they could once do!" The children are told...