Paperbacks for Young Readers

In May of 1990, a cargo ship spilled five huge containers of Nike shoes into the Pacific Ocean. By December, sneakers were washing up on beaches from The Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada to the Oregon-California border. Tracking Trash is a fascinating look at how our trash—whether mistakenly spilled off a ship or absentmindedly discarded in a storm-drain—makes it into and around our planet’s oceans. Clear, informative asides explain latitude and longitude, currents, and plankton, and most importantly, what we can do to help. Includes a detailed glossary as well as suggestions for further reading. You will never think about the trash on our local beaches in the same way again. Ages 10 and up.

“Every word you choose means something you think it means, and more. / Like if a person is different, that’s a good thing. / But if they have a defect, that is not.” Jason is a writer. He is twelve years old. He has a younger brother who adores him. He excels in English class, but struggles in Art. He is autistic. He gets very nervous around girls. While he has an impossible time interacting with his classmates, Jason feels completely at home in an online community called Storyboard, where he can post and get feedback for the stories he writes. When PheonixBird, another Storyboard writer, shows particular interest in Jason, he realizes that he may have just made his first friend. Full of word-play and Jason’s own spot-on advice about writing, this engaging and poetic novel offers insights not only into the world of autism, but into that of neurotypicals as well. Ages 10 and up.

Part outdoor adventure and part captivating sci-fi/fantasy, Rebecca Stead (winner of the 2010 Newbery Award for When You Reach Me) weaves a wonderfully unexpected and satisfying tale in this, her debut novel. She gives us two stories: that of Thea, whose people have taken refuge deep beneath the arctic ice, and that of Peter, a boy from New York, whose scientist father gets a grant to study the effects of global warming in Greenland. Each takes place in a reality so alien to the other that it seems as though they could never come together. But as their stories develop, Peter and Thea’s worlds slide together like a zipper. With exceptional pacing that keeps the pages turning, Stead delivers both an exciting narrative and a timely reminder of larger issues of personal responsibility to our planet and our fellow humans. Ages 10–14.