“The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Young Readers Edition”: Michael Pollan has rewritten his adult bestseller for any of you who are ages 10 and up. (It’s not the first time; an earlier teen version came out in 2009.) This edition includes a lot of helpful graphics and lively, friendly captions aimed right at you (Why Did the Chicken Cross the Pasture?) as well as a new introduction by Pollan. Learning to care where your food comes from and how it gets made can feel like an overwhelming responsibility, Pollan writes, but you should also see it as an opportunity because “although you won’t be able to vote in elections until you’re eighteen, you can vote with your fork now – by choosing to eat foods that reflect your values, and to avoid ones that don’t. Best of all, you can vote this way not just once, but three times a day.” This gets four forks. – MARY POLS

“Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food”: Eric Schlosser teamed up with journalist Charles Wilson to reshape his influential 2001 “Fast Food Nation” for you. As Schlosser said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle when the preteen edition came out, “I love the Harry Potter books. They’re not condescending. They are extremely intelligent. They are really well written. I thought, ‘Why can’t there be nonfiction books that treat kids with the same respect?'” Accordingly, “Chew on This” assumes you can handle tough issues like slaughterhouses and labor practices. And it describes things in terms you can relate to. On a trip to a morgue, Schlosser and Wilson compare livers from healthy and unhealthy dead people: “The two livers on the table are especially gross. They seem like something from one of those Halloween fairs at school, where you close your eyes, put your hand in a bucket, and feel something cold and wet and slimy.” Since many of you eat fast food, work at fast food restaurants and guzzle soda, “Chew on This” speaks directly to you. – PEGGY GRODINSKY

Courtesy photo

Courtesy photo