It’s reading season! The Catalyst team has assembled some of our favorites for all the book-lovers on your gift list this year!
Got a young bookworm at home? Here are my top picks for teen and tween readers.—SarahBelle Selig, South African office manager/publicity
A young boy brings his community together in a creative way in The Cedarville Shop & the Wheelbarrow Swap. Set in the last days of South Africa’s apartheid-era, Halley’s Comet finds three teens in an unlikely friendship, bound by a shared secret. An ancient prophesy sets 16-year-old Ebba on a quest to save the world in The Thousand Steps, book one of the Fiery Spiral trilogy.
A sense of place, a point on a timeline, and the stories that make a nation. Three titles that carry their moment in time. —Ashawnta Jackson, publicity
Grace tries to free herself from the bounds of her family’s and country’s history in Unmaking Grace. Part of the City of Kings trilogy. The Theory of Flight explores the history of a nation through the interconnected lives of its characters. All Rise is an illustrated history of six true stories of South Africa resistance in the years prior to apartheid.
Know someone whose happy place is under a wide-open sky? Try these books that explore the wonder of science and nature. —Jessica Powers, Catalyst Press publisher/founder
The world’s most photogenic toad shines in Bait the Toad, a gift book featuring photographs of Bait in action (or as much action as a toad can muster). And you can keep the spirit of Bait with you everywhere you go with our fun toad-bags. Explore the lives, science, and myths of the animals of the African continent in the collection of essays in Cat Among the Pigeons. A historical novel set in 1870s South Africa, Eye Brother Horn explore family, kinship, and the ecological devastation wrought by colonialism.
