Catalyst Books

In the chaos of disaster, finding other people may bring salvation or a new set of dangers where menace, death, friendship, and love are found in the surprising fissures of a drowning world.  18-year-old Jack wakes from a blackout to find an apocalyptic landscape, the earth split open and a violent flood engulfing the farming valley where he lives. Orphaned and homeless, Jack begins searching for signs of life. But someone, or something, is stalking him. Through flooded farmlands and mountain terrain, survival rests on a razor-thin edge, the loss or discovery of food and tools the difference between life and death. Jack struggles through a transformed world and into a new life, haunted by the demons and scars of the old. Set in the near future, Ship in the Sky is a coming-of-age literary work of fiction. Cormac McCarthy''s The Road for young adults.

A Skipping Stones Winner, 2024Hi!! I''m Epi Dermis, but my friends just call me Skin!Raise your hands if you sweat, tan, itch, have hair, or have freckles!  I''ve been feeling pretty sensitive lately because everybody has something to say about me. But people don''t always tell the truth.My color doesn''t make me fast, strong, smart, or scary. I just want to shout, "It''s just skin, silly!" "[A]n irresistibly brilliant, pitch-perfect page-turner that should be a must-read in every Pre-K and Elementary School in our country." — Henry Louis Gates JrAn illustrated children''s book on the evolution of skin color, based on a collective 40+ years of peer-reviewed research from expert anthropologist Dr. Nina Jablonski and historian Dr. Holly Y. McGee, with a special foreword from celebrated literary critic and historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Meet Epi Dermis, your kid''s quirky, clever guide to the origin of skin color! Using simple science and interactive activities, Epi takes readers on an adventure through human history to find out why skin is the hardest working organ in the body business. Whether it’s how migration and climate changed our skin''s need for melanin, to why sweat is your body’s secret superpower, Epi’s got all the facts—and uses them to challenge false narratives about race and give kids the information they need to do the same.

Big-hearted, kaleidoscopic, and honest, The Enumerations explores the far-reaching legacies of mental illness and trauma, and the children left to pick up the pieces of their parents’ emotional lives. Noah Groome counts to five. At seventeen, he can do more than that, but counting everything in fives—from the steps he takes to the minutes in the day—keeps his raging anxiety at bay. The voice in his head, which he calls The Dark, controls everything he does. And it’s getting worse. His increasingly severe OCD impacts every member of Noah’s family: his mother Kate, desperate for comfort as her home life falls apart; his father Dominic, who retreats emotionally as old demons rise to the surface; his protective little sister Maddie, forced to be the happy child; and most of all Noah, a troubled teenager trying to protect his loved ones from himself. Following a violent incident at school, Noah is sent to rehab in Cape Town, where he meets Juliet, a rebellious girl with a sex addiction who isn''t afraid of the voice in Noah’s head. As bonds are made and long-held secrets are revealed, Noah is not the only one who will find healing.