Mary Pipher is an excellent narrative non-fiction writer. The strong psychology of The Green Boat grabbed me and kept me going for about 3/4 of the book. Then I got lost. It appeared at first to be a recognition of the clash between the current environmental catastrophe and the human acknowledgement of it (or lack there of). Pipher kindly puts herself with us. "We want to do the right thing, but it's increasingly hard to discern what the right thing is. Most problems... seem to possess almost oceanic complexity." I like that. But then a quarter of the book is spent discussing the rallying of foody friends to fight TransCanada and the subsequent battle. Although interesting, I kept thinking "most people can't afford to eat local, organic, hand-crafted peasant loaves; you've lost the biggest portion of our population!" Ultimately I think the message is the same as My Green Manifesto by David Gessner but The Green Boat seems less accessible to the commoner. My Green Manifesto is a horrible title but Gessner, too, has a lovely writing style (makes you want to become a bird watcher), is full of humor, and his message is clearer: care about some place (a park, wild space, whatever), and then protect it with everything you've got. Don't have a place you care about yet? Go for a walk, every day. Be outside. I like that message. Anyone can do it and it's not overwhelming.On a completely different note...
Have you heard of the Graphic Canon series? You can read bits of literature in graphic novel form! What I loved best was discovering new old fables/myths. I had never heard of Gilgamesh or Lysistrata. And though they don't print the whole story the editor Russ Kick did a nice job with the synopses. I've read volume 1, now on to 2.
And since I was on a myths and legends kick, I read the YA fantasy Dingo by Charles de Lint. It won the World Fantasy Award and the cover art is beautiful. The underlying myth of the story was excellent. I think many a young teenager would like it. I've never read anything else by Charles de Lint and now I want to read more but I'm hoping his adult stuff has characters that are a bit more three-dimensional.
Between Shades of Gray by Uta Sepetys was excellent: one of the few stories (if not the only one) written to engage young adults in a history almost no one discusses anymore (if ever). Though the Holocaust needs to be discussed, so too does Stalin's massacre and displacement of millions. I was impressed that the author managed to emphasize the humanity present in such horrible circumstances, though she says she focused on the love. I also liked that the narrator experienced much through the lens of art, thinking of how she would draw everything around her. Sadly the book had no pictures! They should have hired the illustrator for A Monster Calls. Between Shades of Gray won The Golden Kite Award and was nominated for a Carnegie Medal as well as being a NY Times notable book. 
To continue in the same dark vein of history, I also read Helga's Diary by Helga Weiss about her experiences as a young girl in Hitler's concentration camps. She documented her experiences on whatever scraps of paper she could find and they passed them off to her uncle at Terezin who hid them in the bricks. Once she was "free" she wrote down the rest of her experiences before moving on with her life to the best of her ability. This is not fiction though not every piece may be exactly right. What stood out for me, especially after having read Between Shades of Gray, was the honesty of emotion. Emotions swing and we lie to ourselves constantly. Lina in Between was the typical teen, a bit angsty and scared, an amalgamation of many teens, but always growing into a stronger woman. Helga was mostly scared and confused but steadily transitioned from a girl who had hopes and dreams to a girl who just didn't want to be hurt and expected to die. And she was selfish. She felt she was the most unlucky girl in the world and then said she managed to get both clogs and stocking and some people would have to go barefoot all winter.
Last night I stayed up late to finish the YA award-winning novel A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Obviously it was a short book - it took me barely a day to finish - and a good one. At first I was a little blasé about the story line and the main character because I felt I had seen them a few times before but the art work (by Jim Kay) kept me going as well as the smooth writing. By the end I was completely absorbed, sitting under a lone lamp while the world around me slept, and I cried. I haven't cried for a book in a while. I generally avoid weepers. There are enough sad things in the world, must I burden myself with the stories based on those things as well? But I had borrowed this one from the library believing it was about something else entirely and once I started... well, I described that above.
Now I must be in the mood for weepers. Tonight I started the YA novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys about the survival of a girl during Stalin's "cleansing" after Soviet Russia annexed Estonia, Lithoania, and Latvia. I wish it had illustrations, though. The girl is an artist and sends clues through drawings. Shouldn't that have illustrations? Perhaps they will do a graphic novel version next.