All About Books with Adrianne

Ship Breaker

Bacigalupi, P. (2011). Ship breaker. New York: Little, Brown.

What will you do for family? Who is family? Can loyalty to others be thicker than blood? Family is a theme that runs throughout the story of Ship Breaker. Ship Breaker by Paulo Bacigalupi is set some time in the future on what seems to be the Gulf Coast in the United States. A diverse group of people live and work on the beach to break down ships that have sunk on the coast. Ships are stripped of every useful material for large corporations to sell as salvage. Nailer is the main character of the story. He is small enough to work on the light crew, the crew that is responsible for salvaging the smaller things on the ship. Nailer is small for his age and he is able to crawl in and out of the duct work taking out any useful copper wire he can find. Nailer’s mother has died and his father is a violent man addicted to drugs. He is neglectful and abusive towards Nailer, but Nailer is lucky that he has found family in Pima, the leader of his work crew and her mother Sadna.

The people that work to break down ships are largely superstitious and believe in luck and fate. Nailer believes that the fates have brought him luck that day that he and Pima find a newly wrecked luxury ship that no one has laid claim to. They board it to find it filled with objects, that once scavenged will make them rich beyond anything they ever dreamed about. They also find a wounded girl aboard named Nita Chaudhury. After rescuing her from the wreck, they learn that she is a pawn in a deadly game for control of her father’s company. Her father is the owner of the Patel Corporation a huge, powerful player in the salvage business. Nailer has to decide if he will help Nita escape and find her father in defiance of his father who is trying to sell her for a bounty. Nailer struggles with the ideas of family and loyalty as he decides what he must do.

I would recommend this book for children in the seventh grade and up. The book has quite a bit of violence in it. Also students at this age can relate to the strong feelings and loyalty that Nailer felt for his friends. Overall I liked the book and found it to be interesting and very well written. I did have a hard time believing how much Captain Candless relied on Nailer and his opinions. Ship breakers are looked down upon by much of society, and I don’t think the Captain would have relied on one so young and from a group that is held in such low esteem. I do look forward to reading the companion book to Ship Breaker when it is released.

Ship Breaker has a companion book! It will be released May 1, 2012. Learn more about it here: