A Good Courage

Fourteen-year-old Ty Rainey's mother brings the family to live in an isolated religious commune called 'the Kingdom,' and the book wastes no time showing readers what cult dynamics actually look like: children separated from parents, harsh labor, meager food, cruel overseers, and adults too immersed in religious study to believe what their kids are telling them. Ty is eventually confined in a disciplinary cage, but he covertly teaches a younger boy to read and finds a way out. His loyalty to his mother versus his need to protect children is a genuinely complex moral problem. Parents should know the abuse content is real — not graphic, but not softened either — and the cult environment may disturb younger readers. The religious antagonist here is a cult, not mainstream faith. A School Library Journal Best Book.