Wide Reading Themes: Man vs Nature

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.

I'm stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Earth. I'm in a Habitat designed to last 31 days. If the Oxygenator breaks down, I'll suffocate. If the Water Reclaimer breaks down, I'll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I'll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death.

The moving story of a proud dog who escapes captivity to become the leader of a wolf pack. Buck is a dog born to luxury, but betrayed and sold to be a sledge dog in the harsh and frozen Yukon. This is the remarkable story of how Buck rises above his enemies to become one of the most feared and admired dogs in the north.

From the author of the multi-award-winning and bestselling How to Bee comes an intense and thrilling new adventure.

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens

Matt and John are best friends, working-class guys trying to earn some money in Montauk for the summer. When they meet Driana, JoJo, and Stef, three friends who live a much different life of priviledge, Matt and John find themselves in a sticky situation where temptation rivals sensability. Worlds collide when the group ventures out to sea aboard a small boat that Stef sneaks out from her dad's dock. As the waves rise and the fragile vessel weakens, things go horribly wrong. Adrift at sea for days, who will have what it takes to survive?

Robinson Crusoe is not content with his life in England. He is bored and wants to see more of the world. His curiosity convinces him to leave his homeland and travel abroad. Without telling his parents, young Robinson sets off on a voyage of discovery. During the years that follow he learns much, not just about the world, but about himself as well. Following disaster at sea on more than one occasion, Robinson toys with the idea of settling down. However, his adventurous character gets the better of him and he boards ship once again. This time, though, a calamitous shipwreck wipes out the whole of the crew and leaves Crusoe alone on a seemingly deserted island. How is it possible for one man to survive in such a situation? Will he manage to leave or be forced to remain on the island?

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America - from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington State - and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise - a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet.

Lenora Allbright is 13 when her father convinces her mother, Cora, to forgo their inauspicious existence in Seattle and move to Kaneq, AK. It's 1974, and the former Vietnam POW sees a better future away from the noise and nightmares that plague him. Having been left a homestead by a buddy who died in the war, Ernt is secure in his beliefs, but never was a family less prepared for the reality of Alaska, the long, cold winters and isolation. Locals want to help out, especially classmate Matthew Walker, who likes everything about Leni. Yet the harsh conditions bring out the worst in Ernt, whose paranoia takes over their lives and exacerbates what Leni sees as the toxic relationship between her parents. The Allbrights are as green as greenhorns can be, and even first love must endure unimaginable hardship and tragedy as the wilderness tries to claim more victims.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

All around him, the smell of trees rose from the ground, earthy and dank, just the way he'd smelt it that first day. And he'd heard a voice that day, which he'd thought was calling out a welcome. But really it had been calling out for help.' Kid Cato's come to Belize, on the Caribbean coast. He's left behind his life in London and is looking for his dad. But what he finds instead is a group of gap year volunteers. They're just the boring, do-good types he's always hated, but he's stuck with them. Stuck with the jungle too - but, by the time it's done with him, he'l never be the same. And neither will Kid's new companions. Living in the trees will change them all. 'Forest are like lungs. They breathe life into us and make us one. Here we are from worlds apart. And thanks to the forest we're sharing one life. Where we come from doesn't matter, or what we once were in the past. It's what we are now that matters. It's what we make of ourselves.'