Books like Watership Down — picked by fans

This is a wonderful book to expand our compassion regarding less charismatic but highly important and magnificent beings – the trees.

I was really captivated by all the interesting facts that I had no idea about, and the gorgeous watercolor illustrations made it even more entertaining. Now, when I go to the forest, I think about the roots being highly connected underneath, about Mother Trees nurturing their young and exchanging nutrients and information with other trees.

Having all this new knowledge makes the forest feel even more alive to me. It also reminded me that even if we are not aware of it, humans are part of the infinite natural web of connections. Our actions affect the forests as much as the lack of forests affects our psychology and behavior. 

This graphic novel was not only moving, but it also helped me to get a deeper understanding of the business of elephant riding for tourists.

I knew that this was a terrible practice, but learning all the details about how these magnificent creatures are treated made me feel that I want to help promote awareness about alternatives, like elephant-friendly tours.

This book captivated me from the beginning, and the illustrations are some of the most beautiful I have seen in graphic novels. I loved how so much fascinating information was woven into the story, making it entertaining and educational. 

This almost dialogue-free graphic novel brought me closer to Nature, giving me an opportunity to stop and listen, to admire, and to be more present.

The beauty and intricacy of the illustrations reminded me of why I enjoy being in the woods so much – the unexpected animal encounters, the surprising small changes in the plants around me, the different speed of life.

To expand our compassion (and our own world), we have to recognize that there are more than Human characters and stories that need to be heard. 

This is a very encouraging graphic novel for anyone who thinks that their voice and concerns about Nature's protection aren't being heard.

It just takes one caring person to start a movement and, in time and with effort, to save the natural places that we love. I appreciate how the story starts in the forest, which the protagonist and her friends love, and I enjoyed following their journey and decisions on how to proceed to prevent a parking lot from being built in it instead. 

My husband Tom and I started a movement called Protect the Porkies to prevent a sulfide mine from being built right next door to one of the most beloved State Parks, the Porcupine Mountains, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

In the beginning, it was only the two of us, but now there are hundreds of thousands of people who are working to spread the word to… show more.

This book is tense! Jess is alone in the Canadian wilderness, still injured from the car accident that killed her mom, and now her dad has been murdered and his cabin burned down. Jess must figure out how to survive in the cold with no shelter and no way out when nobody knows where she is. This is part survival story and part thriller. Jess is driven by her desire to survive as much as her desire for revenge. The survival aspect here is enough to keep you reading, but I also loved trying to piece together the mystery of why her dad was killed. 

When sharks are circling your life raft, I do not recommend drinking seawater to quench your excruciating thirst. In Albatross, five people find themselves adrift at sea in a small life raft with no food or water. When one of the sailors drinks seawater we see how that can dehydrate the brain and cause hallucinations. Suddenly the sailor blurts out that he is going to get his car to get some beer, and he steps out of the life raft. The sharks are waiting.

Albatross is not only a story of mistakes made, but also of courageous decisions by two survivors, Deb Kiley and Brad Cavanaugh. It is hair-raising, insightful, and might just keep you off the water.

This book is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are living in domes to keep them safe from the deadly radiation of the planet. The story follows: Aria is a young woman living in the safety of one of these domes, and her quest to find her mother, whom she lost contact with recently after her mother was sent out to repair damage to a pod in the outer wastelands. She knows she likely won’t survive, but she ventures out into the unknown anyway, finding help from a young man named Perry. Perry is an outsider, one of the few humans left able to survive the planet’s harsh conditions. His people are referred to as uncivilized savages.

This story has a great plot twist, and Aria finds out that the savages might not be the people who live outside the domes but within them. I love a good plot… show more.

One of Stephenson’s most recent novels, Termination Shock is a present-day story about an eccentric billionaire who takes on climate change. As the former lead energy and transportation economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers who helped craft a lot of the legislation that governs climate change policy today, I’m often annoyed at how often writers are wrong about both the science and the economics of climate change. This novel is one of the more accurate representations of both the urgency and scope of the climate problem that avoids the fearmongering, while still telling a fun adventure story about princesses and queens and surprising true stories about feral hogs and rock-throwing Indian and Chinese martial artists fighting a real war recorded by social media.

A little levity may be required as we watch the world crumble around us. Anne Washburn’s play reads as a multi-generational game of telephone. Beginning shortly after the apocalypse, with television now obsolete, people gather round a campfire and begin retelling what they remember from random episodes of The Simpsons. In the second act, the retelling has evolved into an oral tradition far from the original. By the third act, we’re eighty years removed from the apocalypse, and the story has become its own bizarre and surreal performance. I read Mr. Burns and saw the play in person years ago, but I still think about it and laugh. It might also somehow be a fairly accurate depiction of our post-apocalyptic world.

In my search for a survival novel with a young female protagonist, I came across this gem set on a fictional island in the Pacific Northwest, close to where I live.

Thirteen-year-old Hannah is new to babysitting when disaster in the form of an earthquake strikes. I appreciated the way the protagonist constantly evaluates her situation, finding resilience and strength when there are no adults to turn to.