"Poisoning your own drinking water,
changing the air so much the earth shook and melted and crumbled,
harvesting a race for medicine." (pg. 47)

This is the world in which Frenchie is trying to survive in The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline,  After his father had gone with the Council to the Southern Metropolitan City, hopeful of enacting some change, and their mom passed, it was just Frenchie and his older brother Mitch evading the Recruiters, truancy officers seeking Indigenous people to place in their new version of residential schools.  Seems that, though all were highly impacted by the stresses of water shortages, climatic shifts and conflict, non-Indigenous people lost the ability to dream and sought out Indigenous Peoples for their bone marrow as a source for that ability.  What actually happened in the schools, though, was the stuff of rumours and nightmares.

While the environmental degradation alone could result in the dystopia of The Marrow Thieves, it is but a fraction of the agony of the world Cherie Dimaline has created.  It is a world that has gone beyond decline and into catastrophic collapse.  The heinous racism against Indigenous Peoples coupled with the carnage perpetrated against them is terrifying but not unfamiliar.  By telling this story in a dystopian world set decades into the future, Cherie Dimaline tells much more about the past.  Still, within that horror, there is a wisdom of self and others, a pocket of compassion and understanding that might be the only hope.
​
"...running only works of you're moving towards something, not away. Otherwise, you'll never get anywhere." (pg. 217)

If you enjoy books about Indigenous Peoples and the environment, try these other books from the TAHS Library.

Meet the Sky by McCall Hoyle is a thrilling fight for survival against the fury of a major hurricane ravaging the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Having grown up on the coast of North Carolina near the Pamilco Sound, I have vivid memories of the storms that devastated the area during hurricane seasons.

​Sophie and her family are struggling even before the hurricane comes their way.  It all started with the accident. The one that caused Sophie’s dad to walk out of her life and left Sophie’s older sister, Meredith, barely able to walk.  All Sophie wants now is to plan for the future—keep the family business running, get accepted to veterinary school, and protect her mom and sister from another disaster. But when a hurricane forms off the coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and heads right toward their island, Sophie realizes nature is one thing she can’t control.

​After she gets separated from her family during the evacuation, Sophie finds herself trapped on the island with the last person she’d have chosen—the reckless and wild Finn Sanders, who broke her heart freshman year. As they struggle to find safety, Sophie learns that Finn has suffered his own heartbreak; but instead of playing it safe, Finn’s become the kind of guy who goes surfing in the eye of the hurricane. He may be the perfect person to remind Sophie how to embrace life again, but only if their newfound friendship can survive the storm.

If you are interested in stories of people struggling against nature, you might like to try these books available in the TAHS Library collection:

Fiction

• Hurricane by Janice A. Thompson
• Hurricane Boy by Laura Roach Dargon
• Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes
• City of the Dead by T. Neill Anderson
• Dark Water Rising by Marian Hale

Nonfiction

• Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans by Don Brown (GRA 976/Bro)
• Heroes of Hurricane Katrina (Ten True Tales) by Allan Zullo (976/Zul)
• Last Bus Out by Beck McDowell (976.3/McD)
• The Storm of the Century : Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Sory of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster : the Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900 by Al Roker (976.4/Rok)
• A Weekend in September bu John Edwards (Galveston Hurricane of 1900) (976.4/Wee)

Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes, award-winning author of Ninth Ward, was written as a way to help middle school age and older students to understand the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. 

When her fifth-grade teacher hints that a series of lessons about home and community will culminate with one big answer about two tall towers once visible outside their classroom window, Dèja can't help but feel confused. She sets off on a journey of discovery, with new friends Ben and Sabeen by her side. But just as she gets closer to answering big questions about who she is, what America means, and how communities can grow (and heal), she uncovers new questions, too. Like, why does Pop get so angry when she brings up anything about the towers?

Awards: 

• 2017 CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 
• 2017 Notable Books for a Global Society
  

If you are interested in learning more about the 9/11 tragedy, try the following books available in the TAHS library:

Fiction

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel by Jonathan Safran Foer
• One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury

Nonfiction:

• The Red Bandana by Tom Rinaldi

The 10 True Tales series by Allan Zullo including the titles above and more are short, easy to read nonfiction books.  The author uses memoirs, diaries, biographies, battle reports, and military files to research his subjects.  He uses real names, dates, and places to write factual versions of his subjects heroism, dramatizing certain scenes and recreating some dialogue.

Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916 by Michael Capuzzo may not be a book for everyone; but, if you are a fan of Shark Week and Jaws, you will probably enjoy this book.  In fact, in 1974 Peter Benchley modeled his great white shark in Jaws on the one that terrorized the New Jersey shore in 1916 killing three men and one twelve-year-old boy and maiming another boy.

If you are interested in the science of sharks, there is plenty of information.  If not, you could skim those parts and concentrate on the accounts of the attacks.  I should not admit this, but that was how I read Moby Dick in college.  I didn't really care about the marine biology of whales.  One thing I will say is that Capuzzo manages to develop the shark as a true main character in the narrative parts of the story.

We also have a number of other books in the TA library about sharks and shark attacks including the following:

Fiction

• Jaws by Peter Benchley

Nonfiction

• Shark by Miranda MacQuitty (597.3/Mac)
• Shark Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance by Thomas B. Allen (597.3/All)

Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor's Story by Caren Barzelay Stelson is a narrative nonfiction book that tells the true story of six-year-old Sachiko Yasui's survival of the Nagasaki atomic bomb on August 9, 1945, and the heartbreaking and lifelong aftermath. August 9, 1945 was a normal day for Sahiko growing up on war-time Japan.  At 11:01 A.M., she was playing house outdoors with four other children making mud dumplings.  There was a flash in the sky.  In moments the other children were all dead.  The atomic bomb had exploded half a mile away from them.

Caren Stelson conducted extensive interviews with Sachiko Yasui.  The resulting story chronicles Sachiko’s trauma and loss as well as her long journey to find peace, looking to her father, Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The author also includes chapters in between the narrative which gives excellent information about the bomb itself, the decision to use it, the peace movement in Japan after the war, and the nuclear proliferation and effort to stop it.  I was interest to see that the slogan in Japan in protest of nuclear weapons: "Never again!" was the same thing used in reference to the Holocaust in Europe.(Nonfiction - 921/Yasui)

Book Trailer

Awards and Honors:

• 2016 National Book Award Longlist, Young People's Literature
• 2016 American Library Association Notable Book
• 2016 New York Public Library Best Books for Teens 
• 2016 Junior Library Guild selection
• 2017 Robert F. Sibert Honor Award for Information Books, ALSC
• 2016 National Book Award Longlist, Young People's Literature​

If you would like to learn more about World War II and the development and use of nuclear weapons, check out these books avilable in the TAHS libraty:

• Bomb: The Race to Bulil and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin  (Nonfiction 643.4/She)
  • ​​Awards and Honors:
    • ​​Winner of the 2013 Sibert Medal 
    • Winner of the 2013 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction
    • A 2013 Newbery Medal Honor Book
    • ​2012 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature
    • National Book Awards Finalist
• Bombs over Bikini: The World's First Nuclear Disaster by Connie Goldsmith (Nonfiction 623.4/Gol) ​Book Trailer
  • ​​Awards and Honors:
    • ​​Junior Library Guild selection 2014