Nonfiction Books Too Good to Miss for Older Readers

​Nancy Brashear and Carolyn Angus
 
As we finished the weeding of books published in 2023 from our bookshelves to make room for new releases, we became aware of the nonfiction books for older readers we had read but not reviewed that were too good to miss. Here are ten of these books that we would love to see in every middle school and high school library. 

Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed. Dashka Slater. (2023). Farrar Straus Giroux.
“Looking back, it’s hard not to wonder how the whole thing could have prevented.” Slater’s first sentence in the prologue sets readers up for contemplating the consequences of their own online activities as they read the true story of the private Instagram account with racist and sexist memes created by a junior at Albany High School in the small town of Albany, California. The nonfiction narrative, presented from multiple perspectives in 15 parts from “Before” to “Making It Through,” chronicles the complexity of effects that the discovery of the social media account in 2017 had on the lives of the girls targeted by the posts and the teenagers who followed them, as well as parents, student body, teachers, administrators, and the community of Albany. More generally, Slater also considers timely issues of accountability and complicity in the internet culture and its effects on the mental health of young people. (note on sourcing, acknowledgments, endnotes) (Gr 9-12) ​

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The Big Backyard: The Solar System Beyond Pluto. Ron Miller. (2023). Twenty-First Century.
Miller begins with a succinct consideration of how astronomers came to understand the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago and a brief history of the planets including the discoveries of Uranus by Sir William Herschel in 1781, Neptune by John Couch Adams in 1846, and Pluto in the Kuiper Belt by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. He then focuses on exploration of the outer limits of the solar system and the latest discoveries, as well as new mysteries, arising from advances in telescopes used by astronomers in observatories and NASA missions. Miller includes interest-catching sidebars and captioned diagrams, charts, and photographs that support this informative and accessible text. In the conclusion, he points out that with each new question answered by astronomers, there are more discoveries to be made, and even more mysteries to be solved, about the “big backyard” of our solar system. (glossary, source notes, selected bibliography, sources of further information, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

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Biology’s Beginnings (Discovering Life’s Story #1). Joy Hakim. (2023). MITeen.
In this first book of her new four-part series, Hakim delves into the history of human discoveries about life science and medicine. Each of the 12 chapters opens with two quotations and features the contributions of key figures from a particular era up to the late 1800s. For example, Chapter 4, “A Philosopher Named Bacon and a Bloody Doctor,” examines the profound effect on the field of life science of two of the “most important thinkers” in Elizabethan England: Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and William Harvey (1578-1657); Chapter 10, “A Big-Time Adventurer and a Quiet Scholar,” considers the collaboration of two German scientists, naturalist and explorer Baron Friedrich von Humboldt (1769-1859) and micropaleontologist Christian Ehrenberg (1795-1876), who explored and gathered specimens in Russia, central Asia, and Siberia in the 19th century when little was known about the microbial world. Hakim’s narrative is complemented by captioned portraits, photographs, diagrams, drawings, and artwork. The second volume of Discovering Life’s Story, The Evolution of an Idea, will be published in April 2024. (further reading, source notes, bibliography, index) (Gr 9-12) 

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83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary. Don Brown. (2023). Clarion.
This nonfiction graphic novel war diary opens with a map pinpointing the location of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine and the prologue, “Ukraine, Russia, and the Clatter of History,” setting the scene for a record of the 83-day siege of Mariupol. Brown’s panels of expressive pen-and-ink drawings portray the brave and heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people as well as the horrific death and destruction of the city beginning on February 24 and ending on May 17, 2022, accompanied by spare narrative text, speech bubbles, and primary source quotes. Russia’s invasion of Mariupol, a strategically-located port city on the Sea of Azov, results in 20,000 civilian deaths with 90 percent of the city destroyed. Brown states in the afterword that as of January 2023, Mariupol remains under Russian control. “Cold weather looms. Bombs, rockets, and explosive drones fall across Ukraine. Mariupol awaits liberation. Death is common currency. Peace seems far off.” (source notes, selected bibliography) (Gr 6 Up) 

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Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam. Thien Pham. (2023). First Second.
Food memories play an important role in Vietnamese American Thien Pham’s graphic memoir. Each of the eight chapters is titled with the name of a dish associated with his family’s experiences as immigrants. He begins with his memory of being a five-year-old child fleeing war-ravaged Vietnam with his family in a small over-crowded boat and eating a rice and fish ball he clutched in his hand during an attack by pirates. The family survives in a refugee camp in Thailand where his mother cooks and sells bánh cuốn while they wait for relocation to the United States where their first American meal upon arrival in San Jose, California, was steak and potatoes. In other chapters, Thien Pham recalls discovering the American food he liked (strawberries and potato chips) or disliked (Salisbury steak in the school cafeteria), until in the final chapter, at the age of 41, he celebrates his new American citizenship by eating a fish and rice dish with his family. (photographs, endnotes) (Gr 6 Up) 

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​Indigenous Ingenuity: A Celebration of Traditional North American Knowledge. Deidre Havrelock & Edward Kay. Illus. by Kalila Fuller. (2023). Christy Octaviano.
For millennia, Indigenous peoples across North America have made important contributions in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and other areas. In an introductory note, Havrelock and Kay share their vision of Indigenous Ingenuity to celebrate traditional North American Indigenous innovation and “to embrace the mindset of reciprocity, responsibility, and relationship.” A conversational text complemented by illustrations, charts, maps, photographs, sidebars, and activities introduces readers to chapters on sustainable land management and ecology; transportation; communications technology; agriculture and food technology; health sciences; textile technology, clothing, and fashion; architecture and civil engineering; hunting and combat technology; mathematics; arts, sports, and recreation; and traditional ecological knowledge for a sustainable future. In the epilogue, the authors end with the thought that the Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Ecological Knowledge celebrated throughout the book are not only a part of Indigenous history but North American history also. (map of Indigenous peoples’ cultural areas across the continent, cultural areas and peoples referenced, glossary, contemporary Indigenous science organizations, selected bibliography, source notes, index) (Gr 6-8) 

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​Mission: Arctic: A Scientific Adventure to a Changing North Pole. Katharina Weiss-Tuider. Trans. by Shelley Tanaka. Illus. by Christian Schneider. (2023). Greystone Kids.
Weiss-Tuider takes readers on the largest expedition ever made to the Arctic, which polar and atmospheric scientist Markus Rex, the expedition leader, calls “the epicenter of climate change” in the foreword, “Frozen in the Ice.” The 2019 MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition aboard the Polarstern, a German icebreaker research vessel, took scientists from all over the world on a 13-month mission that began in September which involved a plan to let the vessel freeze in the sea ice and drift across the Arctic Ocean towards the North Pole to study changes in the Arctic climate system. This well-designed book is organized in three parts: “The Biggest Arctic of All Time,” “Climate Research on the Ice,” and “Our Arctic, Our Future.” Each part includes a series of double spreads packed with an informative text, maps, photographs, labeled drawings, logbook notes, and other insets. (glossary, acknowledgments, photo credits, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

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Plague-Busters!: Medicine’s Battles with History’s Deadliest Diseases. Lindsey Fitzharris & Adrian Teal. Illus. by Adrian Teal. (2023). Bloomsbury.
Plague-Busters! is an engrossing (and at times, gross) history of the conquering of six of the world’s deadliest diseases: bubonic plague, smallpox, rabies, tuberculosis, cholera, and scurvy. Fitzharris and Teal share stories of the symptoms, theories on causes, treatments, and medical breakthroughs of these diseases with a dose of witty humor in the text and Teal’s cartoons and caricatures, done in black and white with touches of red. Each entry includes a “Bills of Mortality” section. For example, famous deaths from tuberculosis include 1553: Edward VI, King of England; 1642: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu; 1817: Jane Austen, English author; 1845: President Andrew Jackson; and 1962: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In the afterword, the authors remind readers that new medical discoveries are often built on ideas that have come before and ask: “What will future generations think of us today?” (acknowledgments, selected sources, further reading, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

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Shipwrecked!: Diving for Hidden Time Capsules on the Ocean Floor. Martin W. Sandler. (2023). Astra.
Sandler’s engaging narratives of seven historical shipwrecks are accompanied by captioned photographs, maps, archival images, and insets with related information. Each entry expands readers’ knowledge in specific areas of content. For example, the first chapter chronicles the underwater excavations at the site of the Antikythera shipwreck in the first century, which was discovered in 1900 by sponge divers in the channel between the Greek islands of Antikythera and Crete, and is recognized as the “cradle of underwater archaeology.” Among the artifacts collected in what was essentially a salvage operation of ancient Greek works of art was a mysterious device that became known as the Antikythera Mechanism, the world’s first computer. In a final chapter, Sandler describes nine additional shipwrecks, including the naval warship USS Monitor, which sank in stormy waters off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on December 31, 1862, that readers might want to explore further. (source notes, select bibliography, image credits) (Gr 6 Up) 

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Wangari Speaks Out (Speak Out #3). Wangari Maathai. Commentary by Laia de Ahumada. Trans. by Susan Ouriou. Illus. by Vanina Starkoff. (2023). Groundwood.  
“Sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible.” Wangari Speaks Out presents the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of environmental, social, and political activist Wangari Maathai (1940-2011), the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive the prize, in an inviting format with pulled quotes printed in orange in a large font size and a stunning stylized illustration in orange, black, and brown on each double-page spread. Having grown up witnessing Kenyan forests being cleared and replaced by commercial plantations, Wangari was inspired to start the Green Belt Movement in 1977, which began with women planting trees in rural Africa and grew into an environmental and political battle. Since then, the movement has planted over fifty million trees in Kenya to improve the environment and people’s lives. In the second half of the book, de Ahumada provides commentary on key points of Wangari Maathai’s Nobel speech. (source notes) (Gr 6 Up) 

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Nancy Brashear is Professor Emeritus of English at Azusa Pacific University, in Azusa, California. Carolyn Angus is former Director of the George G. Stone Center for Children’s Books, Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, California.