Social Geography

Things aren’t looking good for 14-year-old Mehrigul. She yearns to be in school, but she’s needed on the family farm. The longer she’s out of school, the more likely it is that she’ll be sent off to a Chinese factory...perhaps never to return. Her only hope is an American woman who buys one of her decorative vine baskets for a staggering sum and says she will return in three weeks for more. Mehrigul must brave terrible storms, torn-up hands from working the fields, and her father’s scorn to get the baskets done. The stakes are high, and time is passing. A powerful intergenerational story of a strong, creative young artist in a cruelly oppressive society.

Subhi's imagination is as big as the ocean and wide as the sky, but his world is much smaller: he's spent his whole life in an immigration detention centre. The Bone Sparrow is a powerful, heartbreaking, sometimes funny and ultimately uplifting hymn to freedom and love. Sometimes, at night, the dirt outside turns into a beautiful ocean. As red as the sun and as deep as the sky. I lie in my bed, Queeny's feet pushing up against my cheek, and listen to the waves lapping at the tent.

Nkechi‘s wish to be an ant was granted by the wind of wishes, but not without a prize to be paid. The story teaches the child about hard work and responsibility. It also takes us through the world of ants and how they build their colony. This is from the collection series, Grandma Wura‘s Story Hut.

New islands are being built at an unprecedented rate, whether for tourism or territorial ambition, while many islands are disappearing or fragmenting because of rising sea levels. It is a strange planetary spectacle, creating an ever-changing map that even Google Earth struggles to keep pace with. In The Age of Islands, explorer and geographer Alastair Bonnett takes the listener on a compelling and thought-provoking tour of the world's newest, most fragile and beautiful islands and reveals what, he argues, is one of the great dramas of our time.

Red doesn’t remember who she is or where she came from. In fact, her only memory is a terrifying, repeating dream of a threatening shadow and a foggy field. But after many years, she wonders if that’s just something she made up. Red does know that she now belongs with Yakaka, the witch who rescued Red when she was a little girl. Full of power and magic, Yakaka travels the world, healing the planet when it calls for her help.

When aspiring photographer Dylan Moore is invited to join his best friend Rohit Lal on a family trip to India, he jumps at the chance to embark on an exciting journey just like their Lord of the Rings heroes, Frodo and Sam. But each boy comes to the trip with a problem: Rohit is desperate to convince his parents not to leave him behind in Mumbai to finish school, and Dylan is desperate to use his time in India to prove himself as a photographer and to avoid his parents' constant fighting. Keeping their struggles to themselves threatens to tear the boys apart.

From the Nation’s Favourite Storyteller Sir Michael Morpurgo comes a poetic celebration of our new monarch, King Charles III. There once was a little boy, born a prince. Encouraged by his parents, he grew up with a passion for the countryside, wanting to look after it. Then, as the longest-serving Prince of Wales in British history, he dedicated decades of his life to raising awareness for conservation. Now our king, his devoted work will continue to inspire the protection of our planet for future generations.

Cat Wilcox has left chilly Boston for sunny Mexico and a summer of girl bonding with her best friend, Sabrina. But Sabrina has a surprise. She is accompanied by her boyfriend - a boyfriend Cat didn’t even know existed. So rather than Sabrina and Cat spending their study-abroad semester working together at the orphan school building site, Cat expects she’ll be hammering nails all by her lonesome. Then she meets Aidan. He’s cute, he’s smart, and he’s paying her a lot of attention. Cat can’t tell if he’s flirting or friendly, but she’s not sure it matters.

Celia es una niña como muchas otras de su edad: es alegre, le gusta tener amigos y le encanta aprender y conocer lugares nuevos. Sin embargo, tiene algo especial: sabe hablar con las manos y escuchar con los ojos, porque sus oídos no funcionan, es sorda. Celia es colombiana y llegó a Santiago de Chile a vivir con sus tíos; acompañemos a Celia en su proceso de inclusión en una escuela pública chilena.

Most works about the environment build on dire threats warning of the possible extinction of humanity. Alan Weisman avoids frightening off readers by disarmingly wiping out our species in the first few minutes. He then continues with an astounding depiction of how Earth will fare once we're no longer around. The World Without Us is a one-of-a-kind work that sweeps through time from the moment of humanity's future extinction to millions of years into the future.

¡Es el primer día de clases de Rashin en Estados Unidos! Todo tiene diferentes formas de lo que está acostumbrada, desde las comidas en su desayuno hasta las letras en sus libros ¡Y las familias de sus compañeros vienen de todos los rincones del mundo! La nueva maestra le pide a cada estudiante que se imagine la forma de su hogar en un mapa. Rashin sabe qué dirá de inmediato ¡Irán tiene forma de gato! ¿Qué irán a decir los otros niños? ¿Y qué hay del país de donde viene TU familia?

Since the publication of her prize-winning memoir, Craft for a Dry Lake, writer and artist Kim Mahood has been returning to the Tanami desert country in far north-western Australia where, as a child, she lived with her family on a remote cattle station. The land is timeless, but much has changed: the station has been handed back to its traditional owners, the mining companies have arrived and Aboriginal art has flourished.

The Britannias tells the story of Britain's islands and how they are woven into its collective cultural psyche. From Neolithic Orkney to modern-day Thanet, Alice Albinia explores the furthest reaches of Britain's island topography, once known (wrote Pliny) by the collective term, Britanniae. Sailing over borders, between languages and genres, trespassing through the past to understand the present, this book knocks the centre out to foreground neglected epics and subversive voices.

Growing up as a girl in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai had to fight every step of the way to get an education. After she was attacked for doing so, Malala took her fight to the world stage, pushing for the right to an education for every girl, everywhere. Her activism earned her a Nobel Peace Prize and inspired girls and women everywhere to stand up for their own rights too.

Flavia, Jonathan, Lupus, and Nubia - friends and detectives - sail to the Bay of Naples to spend the summer with Flavia's uncle, who lives near Pompeii. There they uncover a riddle that may lead them to a great treasure. Meanwhile, tremors shake the ground, animals behave strangely, and people dream of impending doom. One of the worst natural disasters of all time is about to happen: the eruption of Mount Vesuvius!

The Rosetta Stone was the key to unlocking the mysteries of ancient Egypt. This is the fascinating story of why it was made and how it was discovered. The ancient hieroglyphics are decoded at the end of the book, letting listeners learn to write with the symbols of the Pharaohs.

From a talented emerging writer comes a brave, honest, unforgettable memoir about mental illness, which breaks the silence and shatters the taboos to give hope to all those struggling to find their way through. One day Sophie Hardcastle realised the joy she’d always known had disappeared. She was constantly tired, with no energy, no motivation and no sense of enjoyment for surfing, friends, conversations, movies, parties, family - for anything. Her hours became empty.

Zeit der Zäune erzählt von Orten der Flucht, zu denen Katja Riemann allein und ohne ein Team an ihrer Seite reiste. Wo sind diese Orte und wie leben Menschen im Interim? Sie geht der Frage nach, ob Menschen in offiziellen Camps, inoffiziellen Dschungeln, im Warten und der Ungewissheit erfinderisch sind und gestaltend. Und begegnete erstaunlichen Personen und Situationen. Sie begleitete vor Ort die Projekte von Filmschaffenden, Theaterleuten, Traumatologinnen, Ärzten, Köchen und vielen anderen und schreibt einfühlsam mit dem Blick für Details über deren Ideen und Herausforderungen.

Shif has a happy life, unfamiliar with the horrors of his country's regime. He is one of the smartest boys in school, and feels safe and loved in the home he shares with his mother and little sister, right next door to his best friend. But the day that soldiers arrive at his door, Shif knows that he will never be safe again - his only choice is to run. Facing both unthinkable cruelty and boundless kindness, Shif bravely makes his way towards a future he can barely imagine. Refugee 87 is a story of friendship, kindness, hardship, survival, and - above all - hope.

A spirited and incisive survey of economic geography, A World Made for Money begins with the author stopped at a red light in Norman, Oklahoma. Observing the landscape of drugstores and banks, and for that matter the stoplight and roads themselves, Bret Wallach observes, "Everything I see has been built to make money" or, at the very least, to facilitate making money. This, he argues, is a global phenomenon that nonetheless has occurred only within the past hundred years or so.