It's the year 2015, and global warming is ravaging the environment. In response, the United Kingdom mandates carbon rationing. When her carbon debit card arrives in the mail, sixteen-year-old Laura is just trying to handle the pressure of exams, keep her straight-X punk band on track, and catch the attention of her gorgeous classmate Ravi. But as multiple natural disasters strike and Laura's parents head toward divorce, her world spirals out of control. With the highest-category hurricane in history heading straight toward London, chronicling the daily insanity is all Laura can do to stay grounded in a world where disaster is the norm.
It's over a year since her last diary and Laura Brown is now in her first year of university in London, a city still struggling to pull itself together in the new rationing era. Laura's right in the heart of it; her band, the dirty angels, are gigging all over town until a police crackdown on rioting students forces them out of the city. After a brief exile on her parents' farm, the angels set off in a battered VW bus on a tour of Europe with the fabulous Tiny Chainsaws in the Distance. The tour soon unravels, however, in an increasingly dramatic sequence of events that include drought in Europe and Africa, a tidal-wave of desperate immigrants, a water war in the Middle East and a city-wide face off with the army in London. Not to mention infidelity, betrayal, friendship, love and massive courage. How long can Laura distance herself from the struggle? And more importantly, how can she keep her style and hope alive in a world on the edge of madness?
In the near future, energy wars are raging across the globe, blackouts are a regular occurrence, and the privileged Citizens and the desperate Outsiders of London live very separate lives. Hunter is a Citizen whose father works for the government; yet he cannot help being fascinated by the Outsiders' ingenuity and, in particular their mastery of free running. When he meets Uma, an Outsider, he is quickly drawn into her world and finds himself racing against time—and against the government's cruel Kossak soldiers—to protect everything the Outsiders hold dear.
This book provides a holistic consideration of climate change that goes beyond pure science, fleshing out the discussion by considering cultural, historical, and policy-driven aspects of this important issue. Climate change is a controversial topic that promises to reframe rudimentary ideas about our world and how we will live in it. The articles in Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science and History are designed to inform readers' decision making through the insight of scholars from around the world, each of whom brings a unique approach to this topic. The work goes beyond pure science to consider other important factors, weighing the cultural, historical, and policy-driven contributors to this issue. In addition, the book explores the ideas that have converged and evolved in order to clarify our current predicament. By considering climate change in this holistic fashion, this reference collection will prepare readers to consider the issue from every angle. Each article in the work is suitable for general readers, particularly students in high school and college, and is intended to inform and educate anyone about climate change, providing valuable information regarding the stages of mitigation and adaptation that are occurring all around us.
Winner of the Children’s Literature Association Edited Book Award From the jaded, wired teenagers of M.T. Anderson's Feed to the spirited young rebels of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, the protagonists of Young Adult dystopias are introducing a new generation of readers to the pleasures and challenges of dystopian imaginings. As the dark universes of YA dystopias continue to flood the market,Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers offers a critical evaluation of the literary and political potentials of this widespread publishing phenomenon. With its capacity to frighten and warn, dystopian writing powerfully engages with our pressing global concerns: liberty and self-determination, environmental destruction and looming catastrophe, questions of identity and justice, and the increasingly fragile boundaries between technology and the self. When directed at young readers, these dystopian warnings are distilled into exciting adventures with gripping plots and accessible messages that may have the potential to motivate a generation on the cusp of adulthood. This collection enacts a lively debate about the goals and efficacy of YA dystopias, with three major areas of contention: do these texts reinscribe an old didacticism or offer an exciting new frontier in children's literature? Do their political critiques represent conservative or radical ideologies? And finally, are these novels high-minded attempts to educate the young or simply bids to cash in on a formula for commercial success? This collection represents a prismatic and evolving understanding of the genre, illuminating its relevance to children's literature and our wider culture.
An invaluable resource for general readers investigating climate change, this book examines the impact of climate change on popular culture and analyzes how writers and directors treat the disasters caused by climate change in their novels and films. Climate Change in Popular Culture: A Warming World in the American Imagination is the first study that includes analyses of both fiction and popular nonfiction works devoted to climate change. In addition, the book examines a number of classic works from the perspective of the growing field of climate change literature and includes a brief history of climate change science as well basic scientific definitions, all intended for general readers. The text provides an introduction to the science, politics, and economics of climate change. It also includes both historical overviews and potential probable futures projected by leading climate scientists and environmental writers. In addition, the text looks at how such creative writers and directors as Margaret Atwood, John Steinbeck, Paulo Bacigalupi, Kim Stanley Robinson, T. C. Boyle, Michael Crichton, and Octavia Butler, among others, have used the disasters caused by climate change in their work.
Storylistening makes the case for the urgent need to take stories seriously in order to improve public reasoning. Dillon and Craig provide a theory and practice for gathering narrative evidence that will complement and strengthen, not distort, other forms of evidence, including that from science. Focusing on the cognitive and the collective, Dillon and Craig show how stories offer alternative points of view, create and cohere collective identities, function as narrative models, and play a crucial role in anticipation. They explore these four functions in areas of public reasoning where decisions are strongly influenced by contentious knowledge and powerful imaginings: climate change, artificial intelligence, the economy, and nuclear weapons and power. Vivid performative readings of stories from The Ballad of Tam-Lin to The Terminator demonstrate the insights that storylistening can bring and the ways it might be practised. The book provokes a reimagining of what a public humanities might look like, and shows how the structures and practices of public reasoning can evolve to better incorporate narrative evidence. Storylistening aims to create the conditions in which the important task of listening to stories is possible, expected, and becomes endemic. Taking the reader through complex ideas from different disciplines in ways that do not require any prior knowledge, this book is an essential read for policymakers, political scientists, students of literary studies, and anyone interested in the public humanities and the value, importance, and operation of narratives.
This book provides a wealth of read-aloud titles and related activities that provide busy teachers with the tools to help students in grades K–12 become successful writers. Teachers can always benefit from new techniques that allow them to teach writing in a more engaging and enjoyable manner, and a resource that identifies a plethora of excellent children's books that help students become successful writers would also be helpful. Books That Teach Kids to Write introduces busy educators to the finest in children's literature in all genres, appropriate for readers in grades K through 12; and provides effective ideas for using those books to stimulate and improve student writing. This book discusses language use and other critical components of good writing, showcasing the children's books and specific activities that can help both primary and secondary school students. Included reproducibles for the writing exercises make lesson planning simple, while the sheer number of titles discussed and the extensive bibliographies provided minimize the time teachers must spend researching books to use with their students. An appendix includes more writing instruction resources, such as children's books, websites, and professional texts.
This text contains convenient, ready-to-go booktalks for contemporary fiction and nonfiction books set in every continent around the globe, useful for librarians and other educators of grades three through nine. A public librarian introducing young readers to stories from around the world. A social studies teacher wanting to offer students extra credit on a unit about ancient Greece. A Spanish teacher who needs to generate some excitement and interest about Hispanic culture. All of these educators can achieve their goals by utilizing the internationally themed booktalk suggestions in this textBooktalking Around the World: Great Global Reads for Ages 914. This collection of booktalks and book lists is designed to be an invaluable resource for teachers as well as school and public librarians seeking geographically themed booktalks for newer books published from 20002010. Because studying the countries of the world is a major part of most school curricula, this book will support or extend this important curricular area. All the booktalks in this collection are aimed at children aged 914. All seven continents are represented, but the United States is excluded.
Reading Young Adult Literature is the most current, comprehensive, and accessible guide to this burgeoning genre, tracing its history and reception with nuance and respect. Unlike any other book on the market, it synthesizes current thinking on key issues in the field and presents new research and original analyses of the history of adolescence, the genealogy of YA literature, key genres and modes of writing for young adults, and ways to put YA in dialogue with canonical texts from the high school classroom. Reading Young Adult Literature speaks to the core concerns of contemporary English studies with its attention to literary history, literary form, and theoretical approaches to YA. Ideal for education courses on Young Adult Literature, it offers prolonged attention to YA literature in the secondary classroom and cutting-edge approaches to critical visual and multimodal literacy. The book is also highly appealing for library science courses, offering an illuminating history of YA Librarianship and a practical overview of the YA field.
