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| R to L: Robert Redford & Dustin Hoffman in "All the President's Men (1976)" |
Being a grumpy, past middle-aged male, I don't do deep dives into most Young Adult literature, much less literature written by young adults.
Nevertheless, the attempts by the book's authors and artists to express their inner lives as they navigate a difficult time are worth exploring and may benefit others, especially younger readers.
The publisher Shout Mouse Press looks like it has a lot of cool titles.
Ali Noorani identifies that cultural advocacy was the missing ingredient: "When Americans were looking for an answer to their questions of cultural identity, we gave them a political answer instead." [p. 30]
I watched the documentary Planet of the Humans and acquired Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism, whose author, Ozzie Zehner, was a producer.
The book has three sections. The first debunks the idea of clean energy production. This is especially difficult to read, because I had never entertained serious doubts that humanity could and should continue to expand its energy production as long as it used "clean" & "renewable" energy such as solar, wind, tidal and (one day!) nuclear fusion. I'm an avid consumer of science fiction and futurism, and most of these cultural products assume that humanity has solved its environmental limits while maintaining an ever-increasing standard of living.
A few lines from Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth by Adam Frank explains why physicists believe this is theoretically impossible, but Ozzie Zehner's documentary and book brought this point home to me.
Luis Alberto Urrea's 2009 novel Into the Beautiful North is a comedy against the background of the cruel forces which drive rural Mexicans to migrate to the United States despite the risks they face on the journey, the hostility they encounter, the dangers government immigration enforcement officers pose and the relatively modest rewards the migrants obtain in exchange for enduring these risks as well as the long, hard hours they work and the bitter loneliness of exile.And then, the peso dropped in value. Suddenly, there was no work. All the shrimp were shipped north, tortillas became too expensive to eat, and people started to go hungry. We told you change was bad, the old timers croaked. Nobody had heard of the term immigration. Migration, to them, was when the tuna and the whales cruised up the coast, or when Guacamaya parrots flew up from the south. So the men started to go to el norte. … The modern era had somehow passed Tres Camarones by, but this new storm had found a way to siphon its men away, out of their beds and into the next century, into a land far away. P. 4
Aishah Abdul Musawwir reviewed Yo Soy Muslim: A Father’s Letter to His DaughterCheck out these adorable readers with the new @SalaamReads picture book, Yo Soy Muslim by @markgonzalesco! pic.twitter.com/AwmwPEH2bm— SimonKIDS (@SimonKIDS) August 29, 2017