Earth Day
Every April, we honor our planet on Earth Day with a selection of works celebrating the natural world. With titles ranging from stories of wilderness survival to nonfiction works about conservation and sustainability, this Collection features a broad spectrum of ideas regarding nature and our role within it.
Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action is a 1995 nonfiction account of the legal case Anderson v. Cryovac, which disputed whether water contamination was the cause of leukemia in the defendant’s child and other members of the community. The case was between several families in Woburn, Massachusetts, and two corporations, Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace. Harr is an American writer and journalist. A Civil Action was his first book, followed by Funeral Wars (2001) and The... Read A Civil Action Summary
Affluenza seeks to diagnose and treat the disease of overconsumption that its three authors, John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor, believe to be a serious threat to both the human species and the rest of the planet. Accordingly, the book is divided into three main parts: a discussion of the symptoms of affluenza, an analysis of its causes, and suggestions for some possible cures.In Part 1, the authors offer a broad overview... Read Affluenza Summary
A Girl Named Disaster (1996) is a novel by Nancy Farmer. At the start of the novel, 11-year-old Nhamo lives in her remote Mozambique village with her late mother’s family. When the local doctor, or muvuki, decides that Nhamo is to blame for her family’s recent misfortune, her aunt and uncle decide to marry her off in an arranged marriage. Desperate to avoid this fate, Nhamo flees the village and sets out in a boat... Read A Girl Named Disaster Summary
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (2017) is a nonfiction book written by Raj Patel, a political economist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, also known for Stuffed and Starved (2007), and Jason W. Moore, an environmental historian and associate professor at Binghamton University. The authors’ expertise in political economy and environmental history provides a unique perspective on... Read A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things Summary
First published in 2006, Alabama Moon by Watt Key is a realistic middle grade novel set in 1980 in rural Alabama. After being raised by his survivalist father, 10-year-old Moon Blake knows he can acquire anything he needs from the forest. When his father dies, Moon sets out for Alaska as Pap instructed. On his journey, Moon finds conflict with authorities, peers, “the system,” and a constable intent on breaking his spirit. Alabama Moon was... Read Alabama Moon Summary
“All Summer in a Day” is a short story by American speculative fiction writer Ray Bradbury. It first appeared in a 1954 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and has since been anthologized numerous times and even adapted as a short television film. The short story is regarded as a work of dystopian fiction.Set on a recently colonized Venus, the story begins with a crowd of nine-year-olds peering out their classroom window... Read All Summer In A Day Summary
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book by journalist and poet Eliza Griswold. This study guide follows the book’s first edition, which was published in 2018. Griswold is a journalist known for investigative reporting into political issues, having previously published articles in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation. In Amity and Prosperity, Griswold investigates natural gas companies drilling in Pennsylvania’s western Washington County. The... Read Amity and Prosperity Summary
Isabel Allende’s “And of Clay Are We Created” is the final piece in her short story collection The Stories of Eva Luna. The collection, originally published in 1989 and printed in English in 1991, chronicles the tales that the writer Eva Luna tells her lover Rolf Carlé as they rest in bed. Allende fashions Eva Luna after Scheherazade, a key character in the framing narrative for the multi-tale Middle Eastern epic A Thousand and One... Read And of Clay Are We Created Summary
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals is a book by renowned Australian philosopher Peter Singer. Published in 1975 and re-released most recently in 2009, with an additional preface by the author, the book is widely recognized as a foundational text within the animal liberation movement. Singer tries to persuade the reader of his or her own implicit “speciesism,” a term he popularized, and he argues that the discrimination against other species... Read Animal Liberation Summary
An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 nonfiction book released in conjunction with the documentary film of the same name. This book, by former vice-president Al Gore, presents scientific information about global climate change. He intersperses this information with personal anecdotes that outline the more human and social dimensions of the issue.An Inconvenient Truth begins with an introduction to the basic science of global warming and the greenhouse gases that cause it. The first forty pages... Read An Inconvenient Truth Summary
Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster is a 2009 non-fiction book that examines the behavior of people amid and after disasters as well as the institutional failure that can worsen disasters. Solnit explores five major disasters and detours to discuss several others while providing commentary on contemporary Western culture, anarchism, and the media’s portrayal of disaster victims.Solnit and the many sociologists she cites present an optimistic view... Read A Paradise Built in Hell Summary
Artemis Fowl (2001) is the first of 11 fantasy novels in the Fowl Adventures series. It was written by Eoin Colfer, an Irish writer, and details the titular character’s attempt to restore his family’s fortune by kidnapping an elf named Holly Short. Taking place in Colfer’s home country of Ireland, the novel is also his first foray into the fantasy genre. The novel explores themes of community, environmentalism, and the line between magic and science.In... Read Artemis Fowl Summary
A Sand County Almanac is a 1949 nonfiction book by the American naturalist and writer Aldo Leopold. The book is structured as a series of essays, beginning with Leopold’s description of a year on his farm and progressing to a series of essays on humanity’s relationship with nature, culminating in an argument for an ethical approach to the land. Published by Oxford University Press a year after Leopold’s death, the book is credited with having... Read A Sand County Almanac Summary
This study guide refers to the 2004 House of Anansi edition of Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress. The book is a printed version of five Massey Lectures that Wright delivered in Canada in 2004. Wright is a Canadian author of historical fiction and non-fiction with a background in archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics. This lecture series uses Wright’s unique set of skills as a storyteller and student of history to provide a sweeping and... Read A Short History of Progress Summary
Irish philosopher and Anglican Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) wrote A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710. The short work expounds Berkeley’s philosophy of immaterialism, a form of empiricism asserting that nothing exists outside of a mind’s perception of it. Objects, therefore, are not things, but ideas. Berkeley’s philosophy critiques that of contemporary empiricists John Locke and David Hume, who contended that the mind can perceive the material world in abstract and that... Read A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge Summary
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail is a 1998 travel book by American-British author Bill Bryson. The book was a New York Times bestseller, and a 2014 Cable News Network (CNN) poll named it the funniest travel book ever written. In addition, it inspired the 2015 film A Walk in the Woods starring Robert Redford as Bryson, Nick Nolte as Stephen Katz (his primary hiking companion), and Emma Thompson as... Read A Walk in the Woods Summary
Written by Andrew Clements, A Week in the Woods is a middle-grade realistic survival fiction novel originally published in 2002. It is part of the Hardy Elementary collection of books by the same author. It focuses on the initially antagonistic relationship between an upper-class fifth grader named Mark and his classist science teacher, Bill Maxwell. The novel explores how the two characters eventually come to forgive and understand one another when they must help each... Read A Week in the Woods Summary
“A White Heron” is the most popular short story by American author Sarah Orne Jewett. A work of American regionalism and romanticism, the tale emphasizes the setting, the human-animal connection, a celebration of nature, and individual experience. Jewett is a famous figure in literary regionalism, and her work often explores themes of the natural world. In “A White Heron,” Jewett uses literary techniques such as personification to make the environment and animals come alive as... Read A White Heron Summary
Eudora Welty’s short story “A Worn Path” is considered one of the author’s finest works and a classic in the repertory of American Southern literature. First published in 1941 as a stand-alone piece in The Atlantic Monthly, it was also included in her first short story collection, A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, published that same year. The story established Welty as a notable new voice in American literature. In addition to short stories... Read A Worn Path Summary
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life is a 2015 memoir by William Finnegan, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of several social journalism books such as A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique and Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters. In Barbarian Days, Finnegan reflects on his upbringing in California and Hawaii, as well as his coming of age in the late 1960s. He relays his experience of the surfing counterculture... Read Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life Summary
Bird Box is a 2014 post-apocalyptic, dystopian horror novel by Josh Malerman. The story follows a woman’s struggle to protect two children in a world where people are driven to violence by unseen monsters, touching on such themes as paranoia, raising children to deal with an uncertain future, and the dangers of exceptionalism. Bird Box won a Michigan Notable Book Award and was also nominated for the James Herbert Award as well as the Bram... Read Bird Box Summary
In Blowout, TV host and political commentator Rachel Maddow interconnects a series of global events, all woven together by one common thread: the oil and gas industry. Through the various vignettes, Maddow offers readers a book that is part rallying cry, part exposé, part investigative journalism. Blowout sheds light on forgotten, buried news stories that have been swallowed up and dissolved into the status quo. From the opening anecdote about a Russian gas station opening... Read Blowout Summary
Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982) is an autobiographical travelogue by American historian William Least Heat-Moon. The trip in question—a 13,000-mile circuit around the States—began in 1978, the book’s title deriving from out-of-the-way routes drawn in blue on an old road atlas. The author-narrator researches local history of the areas visited and interviews the many people he meets. Heat-Moon spent the subsequent years composing and revising the manuscript, and after a few rejections, it... Read Blue Highways: A Journey into America Summary
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Written in 2013, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a nonfiction book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The work examines modern botany and environmentalism through the lens of the traditions and cultures of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Through a series of personal reflections, the author explores the connection between living things and human efforts to cultivate a more sustainable... Read Braiding Sweetgrass Summary
Brian’s Hunt (2003) by Gary Paulsen is the fifth and final book in the middle grade coming-of-age survival series, Brian’s Saga. It is preceded by Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, and Brian’s Return. In Brian’s Hunt, Brian returns to the woods two years after his first wilderness survival experience. Paulsen, an experienced outdoorsman, highlights Brian’s preference for a simple life in nature over the hustle of the civilized world. The novel is praised for its... Read Brian's Hunt Summary
Brian's Return (1999) is a young adult fiction novel and the fourth book in author Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet series. Paulsen draws on his personal experiences from the wilderness to create Brian’s outdoor adventure and survival narrative throughout the series, stating in the author note, “Virtually all that happens to Brian in these books has happened to me at some point in my life” (112). Paulsen was awarded the Newberry Honor in 1988 for Hatchet, the first... Read Brian's Return Summary
Brian’s Winter (1996), a young adult novel by Gary Paulsen, is the third book in the Hatchet series of survival stories. Brian’s Winter chronologically follows Hatchet, acting as an alternate ending to Hatchet in which Brian is not rescued, and must continue to survive in the woods through the winter. Paulsen uses his own firsthand knowledge of winter survival skills to create a vivid and realistic portrayal of winter in the Canadian woods.Other works by... Read Brian's Winter Summary
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, a nonfiction history by librarian and historian Dee Brown, was published in 1970 and became a widely influential bestseller. Dee Brown (full name Dorris Alexander Brown) was the author of more than 30 fiction and nonfiction books. As a librarian at the University of Illinois, he had access to the primary historical records from the late 19th century that became the main... Read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee Summary
Originally published in 1986, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner illustrates how precarious the American West’s water supply is. This reality was something few people, including Westerners, realized at the time. The book was listed as one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the 20th century and was nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award. It was also made into a PBS documentary. There is... Read Cadillac Desert Summary
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck was originally published in 1945. A Nobel Prize-winning writer, Steinbeck grew up in Salinas, California, which is near Monterey—the location of Cannery Row. Aside from a few years in Palo Alto, New York, and Los Angeles, Steinbeck spent most of his adult life living in Monterey County, and he drew on his personal experiences to write Cannery Row.Considered literary fiction or classic literature, Cannery Row is realistic and was written... Read Cannery Row Summary
William Cronon wrote a scholarly assessment of the ecological changes in the land wrought by the arrival of New England’s European settlers from about 1620 to 1800 called Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983). Cronon examines both the Native American and European land usage during the pre-colonial time period, including farming, hunting, fishing, and the commercial harvesting of the fruits of the land. In particular, Cronon explores the... Read Changes in the Land Summary
Written in 2012 by Carl Hiaasen, Chomp is a young adult novel set in Hiaasen’s native Florida (specifically, Everglades National Park). Hiaasen, who began his career as a journalist, is the author of six other books for young readers (as well as numerous adult novels). Because his work blends humor with grim realism, Chomp features characters who are just as “bizarre” as their Florida setting. Primarily known for his crime fiction, Hiaasen also crafts stories... Read Chomp Summary
Following his best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), geologist and anthropologist Jared Diamond published a companion book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in 2006. Where Guns, Germs, and Steel described how various environments around the world helped or hindered human civilization, Collapse explains how environmental abuse ruined many past societies and how it threatens civilizations today. An updated edition, released in 2011 by Penguin Books, is the subject of this... Read Collapse Summary
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is a work of nonfiction by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, published in 2002. The book argues that a radical change must be made to the Western world’s industrial and manufacturing systems, which are devastating to the natural world in their present state. Through discussions of environmentalism, industrialism, and design, the authors urge us, as a society, to think differently about what it means to be... Read Cradle To Cradle Summary
Dark Life (2010) is a dystopian young adult novel by American author Kat Falls. The novel is the first of a two-part series, followed by Rip Tide. Dark Life is set in post-apocalyptic East-Coast America, now ruled by a government called the Commonwealth. Water covers most of the planet’s surface in the wake of climate change and a select group of pioneers now live under the sea. Teenage protagonist Ty Townson uncovers a wide-reaching government... Read Dark Life Summary
James Dickey’s 1970 novel Deliverance explores themes of masculinity, the relationship between images and reality, and ideas about civilization and nature through the experience of four urban men on a canoe trip gone awry. Dickey, an influential American poet and novelist, was born in 1923 in Atlanta, Georgia. His poetry is known for its vivid imagery and exploration of nature and the human condition. Before turning to writing full time, Dickey served in World War... Read Deliverance Summary
Desert Solitaire is Edward Abbey’s 1968 memoir of his six months serving as a park ranger in Utah’s Arches National Park in the late 1950s. Throughout the book, Abbey describes his vivid and moving encounters with nature in her various forms: animals, storms, trees, rock formations, cliffs and mountains. He communicates an uncommon reverence for nature, and an unmistakable disdain for tame, cultured humanity, including the vast majority of the tourists who visit the park... Read Desert Solitaire Summary
Dogsong, first published in 1985, is a young adult novel by American author Gary Paulsen, who wrote Dogsong while he was training his dog sled team for his first Iditarod run. It was awarded the Newbery Honor Award in 1986. Paulsen, who was a popular author of young adult and children’s contemporary literature, is best known for books in the coming-of-age genre, often dealing with surviving the wilderness and embracing nature. He authored more than... Read Dogsong Summary
Olga Tokarczuk is among Poland’s most famous and critically acclaimed contemporary authors. She has received multiple national and international literary awards, including the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her most well-known novels and their translation dates into English are House of Day, House of Night (2003), Primeval and Other Times (2010), Flights (2018), and The Books of Jacob (2021).Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was published in Poland in 2009 but didn’t... Read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Summary
Duma Key by Stephen King is a novel in the literary-horror genre, praised for its eerie, spooky atmosphere and suspenseful build-up. Published in 2008, Duma Key is the first novel by King to be set in Florida. The book follows Edgar Freemantle as he moves from Minnesota to the island of Duma (one of the Florida Keys, or small islands) after a life-changing accident. Tormented by phantom-limb pain from his amputation and unable to remember... Read Duma Key Summary
Dune is a 1965 science fiction novel by American author Frank Herbert. As the first in a series of novels, Dune introduces Paul Atreides and his gradual emergence as a unifying, powerful figure in a galaxy filled with political intrigue and the threat of religious war. Now considered one of the foremost examples of American science fiction, Dune won numerous prestigious awards and has been adapted several times in films and television series, most recently... Read Dune Summary
Eating Animals is a nonfiction book written by Jonathan Safran Foer and published originally in 2009. Foer is an accomplished novelist, and Eating Animals is his first foray into long-form nonfiction writing. The book fits into a genre of criticism of the food industry, specifically factory farming and animal welfare. Eating Animals is a New York Times bestseller, though it met with mixed reviews regarding both the content and style of Foer’s writing. In 2018... Read Eating Animals Summary
In the memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Janisse Ray describes growing up amidst her family’s junkyard in rural south Georgia. She structures the book in a series of short chapters, each of which focuses on a different aspect of her family life. Between these chapters, Ray also writes descriptions of the longleaf pine forests–an ecosystem that once covered the south Georgia landscape and has been largely destroyed by logging. Ray is born in Baxley... Read Ecology of a Cracker Childhood Summary
Ecotopia is a novel set in an alternative historical timeline, one in which Washington, Oregon, and Northern California have seceded from the United States to form a new country: Ecotopia. After independence, the two countries have severed all diplomatic relations and have existed side-by-side with virtually no communication, though there is plenty of mutual distrust, even after twenty years. Enter the novel’s protagonist, William Weston, “top international affairs reporter” for the Times-Post newspaper, who has... Read Ecotopia Summary
Escaping the Giant Wave is a middle-grade disaster thriller by American author Peg Kehret. The story follows 13-year-old Kyle Davidson and his little sister, BeeBee Davidson, as they struggle to survive an earthquake, a fire, and a tsunami. Kyle battles to save BeeBee and himself, and he learns to overcome his own fears. Escaping the Giant Wave is one of six novels centered around natural disasters by Kehret and was published in 2003. Kehret has... Read Escaping the Giant Wave Summary
Fablehaven was written by Brandon Mull and first published in 2006. It is the first in a series about an ecological preserve for magical creatures. In the novel, middle-school-aged siblings Kendra and Seth take a trip to their grandparents’ land in rural Connecticut, which they soon realize is hiding magic of all types. The siblings explore the magical world they have discovered while learning how to be both brave and responsible.Fablehaven deals with themes concerning... Read Fablehaven Summary
Set in Canada, American author Will Hobbs’s young-adult novel Far North (1996) follows Gabe Rogers, who lives with his grandparents in Austin, Texas. When Gabe tells his father that he wants to live with him in Canada, his father tells him he may on two conditions. First, Gabe must travel up north to experience the severe cold of the Northwest Territories for one year. Second, he must attend boarding school. While flying through Canada with... Read Far North Summary
Feed by M.T. Anderson, published in 2002, is a young adult dystopian cyberpunk novel set in a future in which excessive consumerism is at the center of human identity and technology-driven artificiality serves as a distraction for a world that is in the final stages of complete ecological destruction. The feed is a brain-implanted device that integrates computer and network capabilities into the user’s consciousness and biological functions.For most, the feed is implanted at birth... Read Feed Summary
In 2006, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New York Times journalist Elizabeth Kolbert published Field Notes from a Catastrophe, an urgent review of climate change. The book began as a tripartite publication in the New Yorker, for which the political journalist received a National Magazine Award.Kolbert’s investigation begins on Greenland’s west coast, where natives have noticed the shrinking of icebergs for years. In another northerly location, the Alaskan island of Shishmaref is disappearing underwater... Read Field Notes from a Catastrophe Summary
Barbara Kingsolver’s 2012 novel Flight Behavior presents a symbolic connection between Dellarobia Turnbow, an unhappy farm wife who secretly dreams of running away from it all, and a surprising migration of monarch butterflies that alight upon her in-laws’ property in Feathertown, Tennessee. As the butterflies struggle to survive and reproduce to continue their species, Dellarobia struggles in her efforts to deal with the consequences of her past decisions and the possibility of her new life... Read Flight Behavior Summary
Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats is a 2012 nonfiction account by Kristen Iversen. Half memoir, half investigative journalism, the book covers Iversen’s life in a town near Denver, Colorado, as well as Rocky Flats—the nearby nuclear production facility. Quiet, observant, and adventurous, Iversen is the oldest of four children. The family keeps many pets, and Iversen adores horseback riding on their pasture at a new neighborhood near Rocky Flats... Read Full Body Burden Summary
In Newbery medalist Louis Sachar’s sci-fi thriller Fuzzy Mud (2015), Tamaya and Marshall cut through the restricted woods behind their school to avoid a bully—but encounter a strange mud that has the potential to destroy nearly all life on Earth. While Marshall struggles with the emotional effects of being bullied, Tamaya develops an unusually aggressive rash from the mud and worries that in protecting Marshall she has gravely injured Chad. Each character faces difficult ethical... Read Fuzzy Mud Summary
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash is a 2012 non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes. Garbology is an analysis of American consumption, trash production, and what happens to everything in our disposable economy after we discard it. Through statistical analysis, interviews, and personal stories, Humes tells the story of our largest export—our trash—and how trash came to be synonymous with American life.Humes divides Garbology into three sections: first, an analysis of our... Read Garbology Summary
Enigmatic and strange, English poet Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” has sparked multiple interpretations since its publication in 1862. The poem helped launch her career and expand the Pre-Raphaelite art movement into literature.The long narrative poem centers on Lizzie’s rescue of her sister from an enchantment cast by malicious goblins. Fairy tales and folklore inspired many Victorian writers, who felt weary about England’s increasing industrialization.Often seen as an allegory, scholars have posited that the poem’s characters... Read Goblin Market Summary
Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books by Gary Paulsen is a 2001 nonfiction work covering the events that inspired the author to write Hatchet, a 1986 survival bildungsroman and Newbery Medal winner listed among the top 100 children’s books of all time by School Library Journal (“School Library Journal Top 100 Children’s Novels, 2012 Poll.” Library Thing). The award-winning novel follows Brian Robeson as he survives alone in the remote Canadian... Read Guts Summary
Half Brother (2010) is a young adult novel by Kenneth Oppel. In the novel, Oppel combines and fictionalizes several experiments in which chimpanzees learned sign language to communicate. The story follows the Tomlin family as they adopt a baby chimpanzee to see if it can learn and use language. Through this experiment and its effect on the characters, the text explores the themes of family, belonging, animal rights, communication, individuality, and growing up. The novel... Read Half Brother Summary
Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016) is Pulitzer Prize-winning author, biologist, and environmental advocate Edward O. Wilson’s in-depth look at the planetary threat of mass extinction, known as the Sixth Extinction, taking place at humanity’s own hands. The current rate of extinction is nearly 1,000 times higher than during the pre-human era, and traditional conservation movements will not work fast enough to save the natural world. However, Wilson argues that there is still time... Read Half-Earth Summary
Hatchet, a Newbery Award-winning novel published in 1987 by author Gary Paulsen, is an esteemed story about a young boy’s struggle to survive after his airplane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. This work of young adult fiction appeals to readers of all ages for its descriptive prose and exciting plot. This guide refers to the 1999 First Aladdin Paperbacks edition.Plot SummaryThirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is in the middle of his parent’s divorce and struggling to contain... Read Hatchet Summary
Kirby Larson’s Hattie Big Sky is a 2006 young adult historical fiction novel that won the Newbery Honor Award. Larson is a young adult author who specializes in writing historical fiction centering on strong female protagonists. Set during World War I, the novel follows Hattie Brooks as she travels to Montana to work on the farm that her uncle leaves to her after he dies. The novel explores themes of community, overcoming adversity, and issues... Read Hattie Big Sky Summary
Swiss author Johanna Spyri originally published the middle-grade fiction novel Heidi in German in two volumes in 1880. The novel quickly became a beloved classic children’s book that has since been adapted into 25 film and television versions, including a 1968 made-for-TV movie and a very popular anime series in 1974. It has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. Spyri was born in Hirzel, a Zurich village that shares a border with the German... Read Heidi Summary
Here by Richard McGuire is a graphic novel published on December 4, 2014, by Pantheon Books. The graphic novel focuses on the same corner of a room over billions of years. It depicts the area long before the house is built and long after it falls. By using different visual styles, overlapping panels, and non-chronological narration, McGuire creates a narrative that comments on the nature of time and life. Here is considered a transformative work... Read Here Summary
High Tide in Tucson is a series of essays by heralded American novelist Barbara Kingsolver, collected and published in 1995. The essays are wide-ranging in subject matter, addressing topics from politics, to nature, to midcentury domestic life, but all reflect Kingsolver’s observations about herself and the people around her. Prior to her writing career, Kingsolver had a wide range of other professional experiences that influence essays in the book.Most of the essays in High Tide... Read High Tide in Tucson Summary
H Is for Hawk (2014) is British author Helen MacDonald’s award-winning memoir about her attempts to train a goshawk named Mabel in the wake of her father’s death. It is a memoir of grief, self-discovery, and the healing power of nature. MacDonald intersperses her descriptions of training Mabel with references to the memoirs of T.H. White, who writes about his own hapless attempts at falconry in the 1930s. The memoir was an instant bestseller and... Read H Is For Hawk Summary
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015) is a work of popular science by Israeli writer, professor, and futurist Yuval Noah Harari. Published in multiple languages, it is a continuation of the work of Harari’s previous book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. While Sapiens contextualized the advents of modernity within humans’ evolutionary legacy, Homo Deus speculates about what lies in wait for humanity in the distant future. Harari grounds his discussion in an... Read Homo Deus Summary
Published in 2016, Hour of the Bees is a young adult magical realism novel by Lindsay Eagar. Set in contemporary New Mexico, the story follows 12-year-old Carol as she spends the summer on her grandfather’s sheep ranch, helping her family prepare it for sale and helping care for her grandfather, who has dementia. However, her grandfather’s stories of the land’s magic and history cause her to fall in love with it. Hour of the Bees... Read Hour of the Bees Summary
American author Tobias Wolff, known for memoirs like In Pharaoh's Army (1994) and short stories like “Bullet in the Brain” (1995), published “Hunters in the Snow” in 1981 in his first collection of short stories, In the Garden of North American Martyrs. The story is believed to be inspired by the painting Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel. The story, narrated from a third-person limited perspective, focuses on the relationship between three characters: Tub... Read Hunters in the Snow Summary
Inferno by Dan Brown is the fourth installment in Brown’s Robert Langdon series of mystery/thriller novels, following (in order) Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol, and preceding Origin. Each edition covers a self-contained story, so readers need not follow the series in order, and often includes themes centered on European and Christian history and cultural traditions. The title character, Robert Langdon, is the only recurring character. Inferno won the Goodreads... Read Inferno Summary
Published in 1971, In the Shadow of Man is the third and most famous book by British primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall. The work details Goodall’s groundbreaking study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park and her unlikely journey from being a secretary in the UK to heading a major chimpanzee study in East Africa and becoming one of the world’s foremost primatology experts. Functioning as both a memoir and a scientific exploration of chimp... Read In the Shadow of Man Summary
Invitation to the Game is a young adult science fiction novel by Canadian writer Monica Hughes. It received the Hal Clement Award in 1992. Originally published in 1990, it was rereleased under the title The Game in 2010. This study guide refers to the Simon & Schuster 2010 print edition.Plot SummaryThe novel tells the story of Lisse, a teenager in 2154. She lives in a dystopian world where robots have taken a majority of the... Read Invitation To The Game Summary
Ishmael is a philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn, published by Bantam/Turner books in 1992. Quinn is a prolific writer specializing in cultural critique, and Ishmael embraces many of the themes that Quinn explores in his other fiction and nonfiction works, such as sustainability and the mythology of human civilization. As a philosophical novel, the work follows a somewhat Socratic dialogue between an unnamed narrator and a telepathic gorilla, Ishmael, using rhetorical conventions to display and... Read Ishmael Summary
Originally published in 1960, Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins is a middle grade historical fiction/adventure novel. Karana, the protagonist and narrator, is only 12 when hunters land on her peaceful island home and kill many of her people, including her father. When the remaining villagers leave the island in search of a safe place to rebuild their lives, she stays behind and must learn to survive on her own. O’Dell drew inspiration from... Read Island of the Blue Dolphins Summary
Jason’s Gold by Will Hobbs is a work of young adult historical fiction first published in 1990. Set in 1897, the story follows protagonist Jason Hawthorn, age 15, as he journeys to the Klondike goldfields in a quest for wealth. Jason’s path follows the most common routes used during the gold rush, and he meets a variety of allies and foes, both fictitious and historical. The story explores themes regarding The Transformational Power of Adventure... Read Jason's Gold Summary
Jaws is a 1974 thriller by American author Peter Benchley. In the novel, a great white shark attacks people in a small resort town. The local police chief leads a voyage to catch and kill the shark to save the town from financial ruin. The novel was a commercial hit and was adapted into a 1975 film which became the highest grossing movie in history at that time. This guide uses an e-book version of... Read Jaws Summary
Jean Craighead George’s children’s novel Julie of the Wolves (1972), set in 20th-century Alaska, tells the story of a 13-year-old Inuit girl named Miyax who is lost in the wilderness after escaping a violent husband and a life that does not suit her. Miyax struggles to survive in a harsh environment as she attempts to make her way to San Francisco. A pack of wolves helps her, and she learns to deepen her appreciation of... Read Julie Of The Wolves Summary
