This modern-day Lord of the Flies" is a haunting existential novel, both award-winning and and provocative. Now in paperback as part of the Atheneum Collection
"Nothing matters."
"From the moment you are born, you start to die."
"The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. You'll live to be a maximum of one hundred. Life isn't worth the bother "
So says Pierre Anthon when he decides there is no meaning to life, leaves his seventh-grade classroom, climbs a plum tree, and stays there. His friends and classmates cannot get him to come down, not even by pelting him with rocks. So to prove to him that there is a meaning to life, they set out to give up things of importance, challenging one another to make increasingly serious sacrifices. The pile is started with a lifetime's collection of Dungeons & Dragons books, a fishing rod, a pair of green sandals, a pet hamster--but then, as each demand becomes more extreme, events take a morbid twist. And what if, after all these sacrifices, the pile is still not meaningful enough to bring Pierre Anthon down?

Endorsed by Amnesty International. Imagine if war broke out - not in Iraq or Afghanistan, somewhere far far away, but here, in our country. In War, Janne Teller embarks on a thought-provoking experiment: by simply turning the current crisis on its head, she reveals what it is like to flee your home country, to be exiled, and to fight for survival in a foreign country. In this illustrated short story, Europe has fallen apart and the only place at peace within reach is the Middle East. You follow a normal British family as they flee to the Middle East and see what they go through as refugees, through the eyes of their fourteen-year-old son. Originally published in Denmark in 2001, War has become more and more relevant and thought-provoking in the intervening years. In addition to the striking format and illustrations, what makes this book so special is that Janne Teller adapts the story for each country in which it is published.