Onward
Nora Shalaway Carpenter, editor
Nora Shalaway Carpenter is the contributing editor of the critically acclaimed YA short story anthology Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America. Her debut YA novel The Edge of Anything was named a Bank Street Best Book, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book, and A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year.
Read more about Nora.
- Coming soon!
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
In this wide-ranging collection of poems, short stories, and an essay, climate change is explored in ways that are meant to inspire hope rather than despair, encouraging readers toward activism and a resistance against the rapid destruction and consumption of Earth’s resources. The characters are sharp and bold across multiple genres in this anthology of sixteen works, and each is able to see what needs to be done even if some are still coming to understand how they can be part of a solution. In “The Care and Feeding of Mother” by Erin Entrada Kelly, characters painstakingly grow a small plant from real seeds and real soil—amid a world in which nature is made up of trademarked replications of what once was, this becomes an act of hope and resistance. Jeff Zentner’s “Tellico Lake” is a verse story that follows a young boy and the real-life fight to keep a dam from being built in the Tennessee Valley in the 1970s when the presence of small, endangered fish grants the area a (temporary) stay of demolition. A brief foreword explores how the younger generation, perched on the edge of an environmental cliff, has responded to a tenuous future, with reactions ranging from ferocious determination to resigned apathy. The stories nudge toward the former, even while acknowledging that it can be hard to hold optimism while the world burns. There is a rich diversity of writing styles, voices, and perspectives that keeps the collection fresh and each entry distinct, though all adhere to the central theme. Brief author notes and a list of resources will be part of the final version.
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-62354-653-3
Ages: 12 and up
Page count: 256
6 x 9
Publication date: February 24, 2026