A young chipmunk discovers the salt marsh is disappearing. Can a tiny outsider become the leader the inhabitants need to survive?

When we think about the most important things in our lives, how many of us ever think about salt? And yet without salt, we would not be able to live. It's no wonder that humans, from the earliest times, have searched for salt, learned to produce it, traded it, and even fought over it! Reading Level 26/F&P Level R

Set over four decades, When Tender is the Heart is a sensitive story about an autistic boy who longs to have a life like any normal child. And despite his good intentions when he becomes an adult, hardship is never far behind as he sets out to create a life for himself, establish relationships with others, and take on potential jobs. One day he will be forced to confront his painful childhood past head-on. But will his heart find the closure it’s been seeking for so long? When Tender is the Heart not only pushes us to think of our relationships with one another but also the affection we hold in our hearts for others. It encourages us to question if our hearts are truly at peace with our past as much as with the present. This deeply moving book will remind us all of how we can find love, forgiveness, and even grace from the people who have shaped our hearts and minds along our journey and, most importantly, within ourselves. When Tender is the Heart is filled with the spirit of love, forgiveness, and grace. It is sure to stay with you long after you have read it.

When chance, or fate, throws two twelve-year-olds together on board a scientific research ship at the edge of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it’s not all smooth sailing! Jeremy “JB” Barnes is looking forward to spending the summer before seventh grade hanging on the beach. But his mother, a scientist, has called for him to join her aboard a research ship where, instead, he’ll spend his summer seasick and bored as he stares out at the endless plastic, microbeads, and other floating debris, both visible and not, that make up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Miles and miles away, twelve-year-old Sidney Miller is trying to come up with an alternate activity worthy of convincing her overprotective parents that she can skip summer camp. When Jeremy is asked to find the contact information for a list of important international scientists and invite them to attend a last-minute Emergency Global Summit, he's excited to have a chance to actually do something that matters to the mission. How could he know that the Sidney Miller he messages is not the famous marine biologist he has been tasked with contacting, but rather a girl making podcasts from her bedroom—let alone that she would want to sneak aboard the ship? Nora Raleigh Baskin and Gae Polisner's Consider the Octopus is a comedy of errors, mistaken identity, and synchronicity. Above all, it is a heartfelt story about friendship and an empowering call to environmental protection, especially to our young people who are already stepping up to help save our oceans and our Earth.

We are currently facing the sixth mass extinction of species in the history of life on Earth, biologists claim—the first one caused by humans. Heise argues that understanding these stories and symbols is indispensable for any effective advocacy on behalf of endangered species. More than that, she shows how biodiversity conservation, even and especially in its scientific and legal dimensions, is shaped by cultural assumptions about what is valuable in nature and what is not.