Hi, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. There's something incredible about the way good young adult novels handle, big, heavy topics, so that they're digestible to young people, but not condescending. You know, I remember reading the Animorph series growing up, and it definitely influenced how I think about war and violence. Today's interview is with Darcy Little Badger about her book A Snake Falls to Earth. It's a speculative fiction young adult novel that touches on really serious issues, like the loss of language and anxiety over climate change. But as you'll hear,

Little Badger tells NPR's Lelah Fidel, she wanted young readers to walk away feeling hopeful.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky

conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the new young adult novel, a snake falls to earth, we meet teenager Nina, who lives

in our world.

She's a Leapun Apache girl trying to unravel the mystery of who she is and how her great-great-grandmother

lived to be more than 150 years old.

Then there's a young cottonmouth snake named Ollie,

who lives in a reflecting world, a land of spirits and monsters, and he's on his own for the first

time trying to find a home. A snake falls to Earth tells their intersecting stories. It's

Darcy Little Badger's second novel, and she joins us now. Hi. Hello. I'm so happy to be here.

I want to start a little bit with the plot with Nina.

She hears a story from her great-great-grandmother, Rosita, right before Rosita dies.

But it's in Lipan, an indigenous language that Nina can't understand.

But she has a feeling it's really important, so she goes on a journey to try to translate this story.

What does she discover on that journey?

So this plot point was actually inspired by some very real issues that lip-on people,

including lip-on young adults are dealing with today in terms of our language.

So the lip-on language has a lot of holes in

...