Wish You Were Here
By Graham Swift

Jack meant it when he wrote, “Wish you were here,” on a postcard to Ellie, the girl who lived on the adjacent Devon family farm, a seemingly banal sentiment that gains gravitas as this subtly powerful novel unfolds. A stoic adolescent close to his mother and protective of his younger, quicksilver brother, Tom, Jack became a large man of few words. He toughed it out with his irascible father after his mother died, the mad-cow catastrophe plunged their dairy farm into hopeless debt, and Tom ran off to join the army.

Top 10 Books on the Environment for Youth
By Ian Chipman

Two topics jump out from this list of the best environmental books reviewed in Booklist over the past year—the life of Jane Goodall and the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. All of the titles below, though, explore ecological themes in fascinating ways. —Ian Chipman

The Camping Trip That Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Our National Parks . By Barb Rosenstock. Illus. by Mordicai Gerstein. 2012. Dial, $16.99 (9780803737105). Gr. 1–3.

This colorful, humanizing account details how a trip through the Yosemite wilderness with prominent naturalist John Muir convinced President Roosevelt to push for the formation of national parks and forests.

Carte Blanche: Just Ducky, Thanks
By Michael Cart

I can see the headline now: “Duck Despoils Environment.”

Come again? Does that even make sense? You bet it does when the duck in question is the world’s richest and when . . . well, let’s back up for a minute for some sorely needed context.

When I was a kid, I loved comic books with a purple passion and among my hands-down favorites was the magazine called Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. How come? Because each issue led off with a 10-page story starring none other than Donald Duck, but not the one-note, jabbering, splenetic Donald of the movies . . .

Top 10 Books on the Environment: 2012
By Donna Seaman

Public awareness of environmental concerns waxes and wanes, but science and nature writers remained on the case over the last 12 months, reporting on catastrophes overt and slow-brewing as well as efforts to do right by nature and ourselves. —Donna Seaman

Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It . By Paul R. Epstein and Dan Ferber. 2011. Univ. of California, $29.95 (9780520269095).

Health and environment expert Epstein and science journalist Ferber document the fact that climate change is already causing an epidemic of epidemics.

The Back Page: Tinkers and Tailors
By Bill Ott

For years, I’ve thought that Alec Guinness as George Smiley in the PBS versions of John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982) represents the most perfect bit of casting in movie history. One look and you realize that, without knowing it, you were imagining Guinness as Smiley all along. And when he starts talking, it just gets better—Guinness’ slow, tentative speech is the ideal aural manifestation of le Carré’s equally tentative prose. Guinness, of course, was superb in many, very different roles—Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Gulley Jimson in The Horse’s Mouth (1958), Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977)—but in George Smiley, I believe he found the role of a lifetime.

Top 10 Black History Nonfiction: 2012
By Donna Seaman

With scholarly acumen and commanding storytelling, the best black-history nonfiction books of the last dozen months reclaim neglected yet essential facets of history, from the full story of Harlem to the secret world of the chitlin’ circuit to the lives of a seminal religious thinker and a groundbreaking blues musician.

Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President. By Dinesh Sharma. Praeger, $48 (9780313385339).