69 books like The Ship We Built

This pick has the distinguished honor of convincing me to try cricket flour. It also manages to present a layered storyline, one that combines an almost classic mystery plot with a traumatized character’s journey of self-healing. This book serves as a powerful reminder that we are more than the incidents that victimized us. And yes, even an insect hater like me enjoyed learning so much about the many uses of crickets! 

This lyrical novel-in-verse tells the story of fifth-grader, Tori, whose uncle does something bad to her on the couch in the basement of her house. The story begins immediately after the incident, which is described very obliquely, and beautifully captures Tori’s shock, shame, anger, and profound sense of brokenness. Adults who should listen to her and help her don’t always come through, and Tori’s shame also causes her to pull away from her closest friends. But slowly, with the help of her mom, her little sister, and her teacher, Tori begins to speak up. I thought Sonja Solter beautifully captured Tori’s grief, her retreat to silence and smallness, and her gradual, incremental healing process. I especially loved Tori’s relationship with her little sister and how it evolves.

When Tai’s useless, always-high dad touches her best friend, Mila, where he shouldn’t, the girls’ friendship is challenged and changed. Tai, already ashamed of her father, wants to pretend the moment never happened. But, Mila can’t pretend because she lives every day with the fear and shame of that moment. After a summer apart, the two friends struggle to reconnect while also competing for acceptance into the same gifted-and-talented arts program. As both work to be seen for who they want to be, they must also learn to look back together at what really happened. I loved the portrayal of the girls’ friendship and the honesty of a story in which the “happy ending” doesn’t mean a return to the way things were.

Lydia knows her mom’s boyfriend, Jeremy, makes her mom happy. But sometimes Jeremy makes Lydia really uncomfortable, especially when his hugs go on too long. She already dresses in baggy clothing so the boys in her school will stop saying things about her body. What more can Lyddie do? When her mom buys a run-down house, and Lyddie finds a book of magic spells inside, she thinks she has a solution: the right combination of magic spells will keep her safe. But when Lyddie’s spells don’t work against the boys, or Jeremy, she has to use her voice and her courage instead. I loved the way this wonderful coming-of-age novel confronts and challenges the culture of toxic masculinity that too often is used as a cover for bullying.

This middle-grade book is a beautiful and sensitive portrayal of a child (Bug) who has never felt quite at home with their assigned gender. Bug’s mom, one of the most loving, caring, and supportive parents I’ve seen in fiction about transgender kids, provides a wonderful example of how to handle a trans child’s gender exploration in a nonjudgmental way. I saw a lot of myself in Bug, and I learned even better ways to support my own transgender child. This book is great for anyone who wants to understand the experience of a transgender kid, and for adults looking for examples of how to be a supportive parent or caregiver. 

I’ve come across a lot of misinformation about cosmological fine-tuning, and it’s time to set the record straight.

Written by a pair of astrophysicists, A Fortunate Universe explains the scientific evidence for the fine-tuning of the laws of nature: If the physical laws were slightly different, the universe as we know it–and life itself–would not exist. Luke is a theist, Geraint is not, but the two agree on all of the relevant science.

In the last chapter, they debate the best explanation for fine-tuning, and Luke lays out a compelling case for theism amidst a number of objections from Geraint. As a cosmologist myself, I resonate deeply with the way that Luke thinks about the relationship between science and faith, and I expect that any scientifically minded person will find this book both enlightening and challenging.

A survival book list should definitely contain at least one treasure from your childhood. This one never left me and it’s a book I return to for its haunting, beautiful, disturbing depiction of Marianne, the little girl who dreams what she draws. Battling against a mysterious, unnamed illness, she escapes from the daily monotony by drawing a house, and a boy, and some sentinel stones. Slowly, this dreamworld becomes her reality. As the children struggle to break out of their house, surrounded by them, the stony watchers, the reader is dimly aware that it mirrors their fight to recover from their sickness. Lyrical, very scary, and a cliffhanger ending like no other, it is deservedly a classic.

I first read it when I was 10, the exact same age as Marianne (the story begins on her birthday), and I have reread it for the umpteenth time forty years later.… show more.

I love books full of facts and figures, and for astronomers, this is one of the best. Now in its fourth edition (the first appeared in 2005), Universe (subtitled The Definitive Visual Guide) harnesses a team of expert writers with Dorling Kindersley’s designers, editors, and researchers to produce a sumptuously illustrated review of the Universe from the Earth to the Big Bang, including extensive sections on the night sky and how to view it. Dorling Kindersley’s books are natural successors to the great Reader’s Digest reference books of my childhood. If you want an encyclopedia of the Universe, this is the one to have.

It Started with a Big Bang: The Origin of Earth, You and Everything Else is another picture book that covers the same territory for the very young as The Stuff of Stars. The writing is conversational and accessible. The illustrations are compelling. The two books read side by side would support and inform one another.  

Tim Peake is a bit of a hero of mine. He’s a British astronaut who’s spent time on the International Space Station.

More than that, he’s a great communicator – especially with kids – and his boundless enthusiasm for the adventure of space exploration is infectious. Explaining what might otherwise be big, scary ideas (how are stars made? What is antimatter?) in a way that is clear and interesting to younger readers isn’t easy, but he manages it effortlessly.

I learned a lot from this book.