Award-winning author Diane Stanley asks young readers to consider what courage might look like in an America under psychological and physical siege in her new book Saving Sky (Harper Collins, $15.99)

Growing up off the grid on a New Mexico ranch, Sky is cocooned from the country's escalating fears over war and terrorist attacks. Then her friend Kareem is falsely arrested at the local Home Depot, setting off a chain of events that utterly upends Sky's sense of security: police arrest Kareem's parents, Kareem goes into hiding, and Sky is interrogated by the police about her role in Kareem's disappearance. As fears mount, the U.S. slips deeper into anarchy and foreign-born American families pay the price as they are rounded up and interned. Sky and her family fight back the only way they can-by hiding and protecting Kareem on their vast, isolated ranch.

To categorize this novel solely as science fiction would be wishful thinking, and parallels to our contemporary times appear on every page. The recognizable adult characters, from the truly good to the fearful to the insidiously evil, are drawn straight from today's headlines, while the young people manifest a courage few can emulate. Like favorite The Giver and the recent bestseller The Hunger Games, readers will have much to discuss after finishing this beautifully written, disturbing book. Grades 5-8.

Diane Stanley is the Santa Fe-based author and illustrator of many award-winning books for young readers. Her novels include the critically acclaimed Bella at Midnight, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and an ALA Booklist Editors' Choice, The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy, The Mysterious Matter of I. M. Fine, and A Time Apart. Well known as the author and illustrator of award-winning picture-book biographies, she is the recipient of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children and the Washington Post-Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award for the body of her work.