Navigating Early

Set just after World War II, this middle-grade novel follows Jack Baker, whose father sends him from his home in Kansas to a boys' boarding school in Maine. There he meets Early Auden, an eccentric classmate who reads the digits of pi as a story and refuses to accept truths that other people take for granted. Lonely and out of place, Jack connects with Early, and during a break from school the two boys set out along the Appalachian Trail in search of a great black bear. Their journey brings them into contact with peculiar and dangerous characters and leads them toward difficult discoveries about themselves and their families. The book combines an odyssey-like adventure with mathematical thinking, as Early's reading of pi runs alongside the boys' quest, and it explores friendship, loss, and perseverance. Clare Vanderpool is also the author of the Newbery Medal-winning novel Moon Over Manifest.