We’ve
Got the World in Our Hands:
An Environmental Issues Reading List
Cathy Belben, Librarian, Burlington-Edison High School Library
*=available in the BEHS Library
Updated June 2002
*Abbey, Edward. The
Monkey Wrench Gang.
Throughout the American West, nature is being victimized by
dams, bridges, and concrete. A
motley quartet of individualists has decided that enough is enough.
A burnt-out veteran, a mad doctor, a sexy revolutionary, and a polygamist
outdoorsman have joined forces to dismantle the machinery of progress through
peaceful means or otherwise.
*Barrett, Andrea. The Voyage of the Narwhal.
Scholar-naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells becomes witness to
the wild, disturbing beauties of the Arctic when he accompanies the crew of the
Narwhal on their voyage to that last unexplored territory.
*Carter, Alden. Between a Rock and a Hard Place. (YA)
Although neither 15-year-old Mark Severson nor his diabetic
cousin Randy are looking forward to the canoe trip that is a family rite of
passage, they begin to enjoy themselves as they make their way through
Minnesota's lake country, until the trip becomes a fight for survival.
*Choyce, Leslie. Clearcut Danger. (YA)
At first, Ryan Cooper thinks a new mill in East Harbor will
be a good thing, providing jobs for the community. But his girlfriend is more worried about the mill's
environmental impact--clearcutting and pollution, and she discovers that the
mill is going to be built on sacred Micmac land.
*Duncan, David James. The River Why.
Describes the adventures of Gus Orivston, flyfishing
genius, as he pursues his true love--fishing--in a secluded cabin on a remote
riverbank.
*Hesse, Karen. The Music of Dolphins. (YA)
After rescuing an adolescent girl from the sea, researchers
learn she has been raised by dolphins and attempt to rehabilitate her to the
human world.
*Hobbs, Will. Downriver. (YA)
Fifteen-year-old Jessie and the other rebellious teenage
members of a wilderness survival school team abandon their adult leader, hijack
his boats, and try to run the dangerous white water at the bottom of the Grand
Canyon.
*Hobbs, Will. The Big Wander. (YA)
As he searches for his
uncle through the rugged Southwest canyon country, fourteen-year-old Clay
becomes involved with a group of Navajo Indians who are trying to save some of
the last wild mustangs.
*Klass, David. California Blue. (YA)
When seventeen-year-old John Rodgers discovers a new
sub-species of butterfly which may necessitate closing the mill where his dying
father works, they find themselves on opposite sides of an environmental
conflict.
*Lipsyte, Robert. The Chemo Kid. (YA)
When the drugs that he takes as part of his chemotherapy
suddenly transform him from wimp into superhero, sixteen-year-old Fred and his
friends plot to rid the town of its most lethal environmental hazard, toxic
waste in the water supply.
*O’Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins. (YA)
Records the courage and self-reliance of an Indian girl who
lived alone for eighteen years on an isolated island off the California coast
when her tribe emigrated and she was left behind.
*Rivers, Karen. Dream Water. (YA)
At first, Ryan Cooper thinks a new mill in East Harbor will
be a good thing, providing jobs for the community. But his girlfriend is more worried about the mill's
environmental impact--clearcutting and pollution, and she discovers that the
mill is going to be built on sacred Micmac land.
*Savage, Deborah. Summer Hawk. (YA)
When her rescue of a baby hawk takes fifteen-year-old
Taylor to a raptor rehabilitation center in rural Pennsylvania, their offer of a
summer public relations job seems a step toward her dream of becoming a
journalist.
*Searls, Hank. Sounding.
Sounding takes readers into the minds of an aging sperm
whale, who wonders how humans can be both killers and playmates.
Crew members on a doomed Russian submarine spend their last days
listening to the songs--or "Soundings" of the whales.
*Siegel, Robert. Whalesong. (YA).
The classic fable of Hruna the humpback whale and his
journey into love, mystery, and spiritual awakening.
*Taylor, Theodore. The Weirdo. (YA)
Seventeen-year-old Chip Clewt fights to save the black
bears in the Powhaten National Wildlife Refuge.
*Thomas, Rob. Green Thumb. (YA)
While spending the summer in the Amazon rain forest of
Brazil doing botanical research, thirteen-year-old Grady discovers a secret
language used by the trees to communicate with each other and falls afoul of the
dictatorial Dr. Carter, whose motives seem questionable.
*Ursu, Anne. Spilling Clarence.
When an accident at a pharmaceutical company releases chemicals into the air, residents of the small town of Clarence find they are able to remember long-forgotten details of their lives, which affects each of them differently. Madeline Singer, a writer, recalls her marriage to a distant, aloof man as less-than-happy; her son, Bennie, recalls his young wife, killed in a car accident, and Suzanne, a young woman in her twenties, remembers her mother's mental illness and the effect it has had on her life.
*Adams, Donald, and Mark Carwardine.
Last Chance to See.
An author and a zoologist travel around the world in search
of exotic, endangered creatures.
*Bryson, Bill. A
Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering American on the Appalachian Trail.
Bryson share his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail
with a childhood friend. The two
encounter eccentric characters, a blizzard, getting lost, and rude yuppies along
the way.
*Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring.
Presents an indictment of man's imprudent use of chemicals,
and the effect on the environment, health and genetics. When the book was
published in the sixties, it was one of the first that examined the damage being
done to the environment and brought about many changes in government policy and
industrial practices.
*Gore, Al. Earth in the Balance:
Ecology and the Human Spirit.
Explains how civilization must heal itself in order to save
the environment. Presents a comprehensive plan for action addressing population
trends, technology, and environmental education.
*Harr, Jonathan. A Civil Action.
Follows a lawsuit brought against W.R. Grace & Co. for
contaminating the drinking water in Woburn, Massachusetts that took nine years
to settle.
*Heilman, Robert. Overstory: Zero.
"It's best not to look at the clear cut," Robert
Leo Heilman writes, describing his grueling work as a tree planter in the timber
country of Oregon. "You stay busy with whatever is in front of you because,
like all industrial processes, there is beauty in the details and ugliness in
the larger view. Oil film on a rain puddle has an iridescent sheen that is
lovely in a way that the junkyard it's part of is not." Heilman's fine
collection of essays, which gives the reader an inside look at the society of
loggers, environmentalists, and people who never stop laboring while trying to
survive, beautifully illuminates the details of the working life. Alternately
joyous and heartrending, evocative of Thoreau and Whitman, these essays by a man
who has lived the life he writes about, deserve to be read by a wide audience.
(This synopsis from www.amazon.com).
*Hein, Teri. Atomic Farmgirl: The Betrayal of Chief Qualchan, the Appaloosa, and Me.
The Palouse Hills in
the eastern part of Washington State are known as home of the golden wheatlands,
a place with some of the richest topsoil in the world. It is also a region
forever changed by the dispersals of nuclear waste – accidental and
intentional – from the Hanford Atomic Plant only 100 miles south.
In Atomic Farmgirl,
Teri Hein explores a childhood marked by horseback riding, haying, casseroles, a
stoic German Lutheran tradition, and the Cold War duck-and-cover drills of the
50s. First and foremost, she tells of her family’s bond to the land: “Wheat
is our thing and a thousand acres of it swaying in the breeze is for us in the
Palouse about the most beautiful thing on earth. We put pictures of wheat on our
Grain Growers calendars and write poems about it when we go off to college.”
The great-granddaughter
of homesteaders, Hein captures the evolution of a landscape and a neighborhood
in the face of the invasions of the 19th and 20th centuries: the U.S. military,
her own German ancestors, and the Manhattan Project. Filled with humor,
poignancy, and a deeply personal web of stories, Atomic Farmgirl offers a rich
journey into the mysteries of childhood, love, community, and place. (from
front flap of book).
*Hill, Julia Butterfly. The Legacy of Luna.
Presents information on Julia Butterfly Hill's two-year
"tree-sit" that she hoped would stop the Pacific Lumber company from
clear-cutting the ancient redwood forest in California, and discusses how she
began a new era in the environmental movements around the world.
Explores the difficult dilemmas the agriculturalist and the
environmentalists create.
*Lyman, Howard. Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat Meat.
The author, a former cattle rancher who was sued by the
cattle industry after airing his views about the dangers of mad cow disease on
national television, reveals the reasons why he has gone from being a
meat-loving cowboy to a vegetarian environmental activist.
*Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation.
A national magazine award-winning journalist charts the
fast food industry's enormous impact on our health, landscape, economy,
politics, and culture. Fast Food
Nation is a groundbreaking work of envestigation and cultural history that is
likely to transform the way America thinks about the way it eats.
*Sullivan, Robert. The Meadowlands.
Sullivan navigates the polluted Meadowlands, a strip of
land just outside New York City that has long been the dumping grounds for all
kinds of waste. Despite the grim
nature of his task—tromping through a sadly devastated natural area—Sullivan
manages to be ironical, funny, and artistic in his examination of the horrors
that humans can inflict on the environment.
*Sullivan, Robert.
A Whale Hunt: Two years on the Olympic Peninsula with the Makah and their
canoe.
The author spent two years with the Makah Indians on the
Olympic Peninsula, examining the ritual whale-hunting done by the tribe and the
controversy surrounding the practice.
*Williams, Terry
Tempest. Refuge.
Terry Tempest writes of the deaths of her mother and grandmother from breast cancer, the results of decades of nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, and the government's subsequent refusal to do anything about it. Additionally, she writes about the changes in bird life surrounding the Great Salt Lake that results from the rising water levels in the 1980's, threatening the nesting areas of thousands of birds. Amid the despair and devastation, she reckons with the meaning of life.