Young Adult Books

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  Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1947/1991) by Anne Frank

  Alona Kharina

  We can take Anne Frank’s book as an example of the accumulation and release of the trauma caused by adverse events, through conversation with ourselves, our shadow side. We can also take it as an example of forgiveness. It is possible for us, as readers, to witness life in a meager room during the war, without any external contacts. We observe Anne’s mental maturation and hear testimonies of unfriendly love for her mother and painful love for her father. Her memoir is an opportunity to explore issues of morality, faith, hope, and freedom, through the prism of the tragic experiences of one family—like so many families fleeing war today, to survive.

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  Hour of Letdown (1954) by E.B. White

  Gareth B. Matthews

  A man came into a New York bar with a big, ugly-looking machine and ordered two drinks. The man downed his own drink, then he poured the second whiskey into a small vent in the machine. The bartender ordered the man to remove the machine from his bar, but the man refused, explaining that the machine needed to be able to “let down,” having just won a chess tournament. Nowadays, many of us spend important parts of our lives “interacting” with computer programs. E.B. White’s whimsical story from his 1954 collection The Second Tree from the Corner suggests is that there will always be a categorical difference between human beings and the cleverest robots, unless someday there is a robot who needs to let down in something more than a metaphorical sense.

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  My Octopus Teacher (2020) directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed

  Peter Shea

  My Octopus Teacher combines a carefully structured love story with astonishing information about undersea life, documenting a year of encounters between a photographer and an octopus. It is important as a non-standard love story and as a reflection on the possibility of deep connection with non-human creatures.

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  Rivers and Tides

  Peter Shea

  The documentary Rivers and Tides presents an unfamiliar take on the work of the artist, the role of a work of art in human life, and, ultimately, on the relationship between human beings and natural objects and forces. In following artist Andy Goldsworthy as he talks through the work he is doing, one has an opportunity to ask basic questions about some deeply held beliefs – to which there are, as he shows, plausible alternatives.

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  Sunflower Boys (2025) by Sam Wachman

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  Two issues preoccupy twelve-year-old Artem, living with his mother and younger brother Yuri in Chernihiv, Ukraine. He must navigate adolescence without the direct guidance of his father, who works construction in New York, USA, and his feelings for his best friend Viktor are shifting in a way he knows he must hide. But Artem’s coming-of-age story is interrupted by the invasion of the Russian army on February 24, 2022. Making their way across war-torn Ukraine toward the Polish border in hopes of reuniting with their father, the brothers experience hunger, severe illness, and the terror of witnessing the murder of family members. The Sunflower Boys draws on accounts of young Ukrainians author Sam Wachman taught in refugee settlements, who asked him to tell their story. The novel prompts many kinds of moral reckoning: What can we do to counteract human-on-human brutality in the small spheres of ordinary experience? How can we (including children and young people) as citizens raise our voices in ways that might summon political intervention to defend the defenseless?

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  Wildful (2024) by Kengo Kurimoto

  Maughn Gregory

  Kengo Kurimoto’s graphic novel Wildful explores the transformative power of nature and deep attention. Poppy is struggling with her mother’s depression after her grandmother’s passing. Initially absorbed in digital distractions, Poppy is drawn into the wilderness when her dog, Pepper, chases a fox. She meets Rob, a boy who teaches her to observe nature with curiosity and respect—tracking animals, noticing patterns, and sitting in silence. Poppy learns that being in nature can assuage generational grief through a renewed sense of wonder and connection.