Hey, Nerds!
Aug. 16th, 2013 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyHey, dudes!
My friend the English teacher is trying to figure out what kind of science fiction books to teach to her 9th graders. She is not well-versed in science fiction herself, so she was wondering about my ideas. I came up with the list below. However, as you can probably guess from the list, I'm not really good at gauging age-appropriateness (or, equally important around here, Mormon-appropriateness, which explains a lot of my "dude, there's swear words here" warnings)--I figured I'd give her some broad outlines and she could take it from there. I also am not sure how Classic or Literary she wants them to be, so I included a few just plain fun pieces. I also tried to steer clear of the somewhat more obscure like CJ Cherryh's Chanur Saga or Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books or Poul Anderson's anything--I'd have read them in 9th grade, but probably they wouldn't work for a class. And I know there have got to be more. So! Care to help?
I've got to say, giving brief outlines of books is surprisingly difficult. I wonder how those back-of-the-book writers do it.
Also, I totally forgot to steer her toward Edgar Rice Burroughs and Douglas Adams. God DAMMIT.
Amelia's Sci-Fi For 9th Graders, As Emailed To Her Buddy
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel. It's a lot different from the book--the monster can talk, and is a sympathetic character. It deals a lot with issues of responsibility toward what you create, and the definitions of humanity.
---
Anything by John Scalzi - Scalzi is one of my favorite science fiction writers. His books are fun romps with a lot of interesting insights. They are, however, full of swearing.
-I'd steer clear of Old Man's War; it's got a slightly graphic sex scene. Its sequel, The Ghost Brigades, works as a standalone. That one has implied sex acts, but they aren't really described in detail. The Ghost Brigades is about a genetically engineered super soldier who is grown in a vat and is "born" as an adult; most of the soldiers are created specifically to fight aliens. Jared, however, has another purpose--they cloned him from a traitor to humanity, and they tried to copy the traitor's consciousness into Jared in order to understand what the traitor will do next. Jared is thus is struggling with trying to figure out his identity and making complex moral choices.
-Redshirts is brilliant, but it also might make the most sense to Star Trek fans. It follows the adventures of a bunch of starship "redshirts"--the nameless guys who die to prove how serious the situation is--who start to wonder why they tend to get killed so much.
-Agent to the Stars might be your best bet from Scalzi. It's told from the point of view of a Hollywood agent who is contacted by aliens: they want to hire him. They want to make peaceful contact with Earth, but the problem is that they are super ugly--so they decide they need an agent to sell themselves to the Earth public with the help of an agent.
---
While it's not quite technological science fiction, Diane Duane has a wonderful YA series beginning with So You Want To Be A Wizard. It follows Nita, her sister Dairine, and Nita's friend Kit, contemporary New York teenagers who don't fit in. They are all nerdy and get bullied a lot. However, in the library one day they receive an offer from the Powers That Be who run the universe: they are invited to become wizards, who battle the evil Lone Power (basically the devil) who invented death and is always trying to increase entropy and chaos. The first book has Nita and Kit making friends with a sentient white hole (like a black hole, but smaller), then going to an alternate New York City to recover a magical book of spells while battling by man-eating helicopters and killer taxi cabs. The later books have them turning into whales, zapping across the galaxy with magic computers, etc..
Note that the first one was written in 1982, so it's a little dated. However, Duane has recently released updated "Millennium Editions" as ebooks, which you can get at her site. If everyone in your class gets an iPad, that might work out well. I usually don't like it when authors "update" their books, but in this case I like it because Duane has such fun with modern technology.
There's also a spinoff series, starting with The Book Of Night With Moon, which is about cat wizards who work at Grand Central Station. At one point in that one Luciano Pavarotti gets attacked by dinosaurs. I read it in 9th grade, but I'm not sure if the kids would like it.
All of the books deal with impressive concepts of creation and mythology, as well as personal choices and the constant battle between good and evil. They also gave kids some really relatable teenage heroes learning to be wizards--fifteen years before Harry Potter. (I particularly like that, unlike with Harry Potter, they integrate their modern lives with their wizardry--you get magical DVD players and iPods and Star Wars references.)
---
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. You know how I feel about it (hee hee!), but it does seem popular with 9th-graders.
---
Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal is a fun little YA book. The main character, Elvie, is 16 years old, pregnant, and living on a spaceship that is a home for expecting teen mothers. Just before she's due, aliens attack the ship and she and the other teen girls have to get through the ship to the escape hatches before the ship crashes to Earth. It's not fancy, but it's a lot of fun.
---
Similarly, Above World by Jenn Reese is a new YA series set in a post-apocalyptic future. In order to survive in the extreme places of Earth, humans have combined genetic engineering and cybernetics to turn themselves into mythical beings, like mermaids (called Kampii), centaurs, winged people, etc.. Each of these groups have splintered off, but now a mad scientist is threatening the communities. It is up to Aluna--a Kampii who still has legs, since she has not grown her tail yet--and her friends to unite the different peoples to save themselves.
Note that it is the first of a series. The second book, Mirage, is out already; the next one is due out soon.
---
One of my favorite short stories is "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight. It's a classic Golden Age scifi story. Aliens make contact with Earth and SEEM to be completely altruistic--stopping war, feeding the hungry, etc. But one guy is a little suspicious of their generosity, and he suspects the answers lie in a book all the aliens seem to be carrying around. It's got an excellent last line.
---
Ray Bradbury writes a lot of great classic science fiction. You probably know about Fahrenheit 451, which everyone thinks is about censorship but is actually about how books bring people together while technology alienates us from each other. (I could argue with Bradbury about that all day.) I prefer his short stories, which manage to give a really good creepy dread feeling (they rarely turn out well for the characters). One of my favorites of those is "The Veldt," which is a diatribe against TV--a father starts to get a little worried that his kids are spending all their time in the "nursery," a room that will create whatever environment the kids want. The kids, whose every whim is fulfilled instantly, become spoiled and demanding and finally terrifying.
Also there's his Martian Chronicles, which is presented as a novel but was originally a bunch of different short stories. It gives a lot of vignettes about human settlement on Mars.
---
Finally, I think you'd LOVE There and Back Again by Pat Murphy (sometimes it appears under her pseudonym, Max Merriwell, but it's the same book). It's a reimagining of The Hobbit as a crazy space adventure. It is AWESOME. Bailey Beldon, a "norbit" (pretty much a space hobbit) is content to live in his asteroid in Earth's asteroid belt and never have adventures. Then a family of clone women show up on his asteroid along with the strange wanderer Gitana to pick up a message pod of theirs he'd found--and the next thing he knows, he's joined them on an adventure across the galaxy very reminiscent of The Hobbit--there is a Riddles in the Dark scene, except instead of under a mountain full of orcs it's set in the belly of a spaceship filled with evil brain-stealing space marauders. Mirkwood Forest is replaced by a nebula (though it's still full of spiders); the Rivendell analogue is a huge space station; the Ring is a complex little device that allows one to step outside of time; and in the end there's a battle with a huge robot dragon.
Murphy makes a conscious effort to follow the Joseph Campbell path of the hero (she even mentions it in an author's note). It's really nice to have some female characters in the mix, too. Note that there are a few references to drug use (they drink a sort of drugged alcohol to get "buzzed" at one point). Probably not a big deal, but again, I'm not sure what the parents would say.
Unfortunately, it looks like the book is out of print--but it's readily available used, for pretty good prices.
---
My sister adds a few:
Scott Westerfield's Uglies is the first in a series of dystopian YA novels. I haven't read them, but they resonate well with teenagers. It's a society where you have to have a radical physical alteration to become "pretty" before you get accepted into society.
---
James Dashner's Mazerunner is another one I haven't read, but it's popular too. And he's a local author, which is a plus!
---
The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey - aliens have taken over, and you don't know who to trust!
---
Of course, Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy is quite popular right now--more dystopian future fiction. Aside from an exciting adventure, it's an interesting commentary on our fascination with media violence and the modern divide between the haves and the have-nots.
So! That's my list! Anyone want to add any?
ETA: Dammit, also forgot Ringworld! I have no idea how 9th graders would react to that one.
My friend the English teacher is trying to figure out what kind of science fiction books to teach to her 9th graders. She is not well-versed in science fiction herself, so she was wondering about my ideas. I came up with the list below. However, as you can probably guess from the list, I'm not really good at gauging age-appropriateness (or, equally important around here, Mormon-appropriateness, which explains a lot of my "dude, there's swear words here" warnings)--I figured I'd give her some broad outlines and she could take it from there. I also am not sure how Classic or Literary she wants them to be, so I included a few just plain fun pieces. I also tried to steer clear of the somewhat more obscure like CJ Cherryh's Chanur Saga or Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books or Poul Anderson's anything--I'd have read them in 9th grade, but probably they wouldn't work for a class. And I know there have got to be more. So! Care to help?
I've got to say, giving brief outlines of books is surprisingly difficult. I wonder how those back-of-the-book writers do it.
Also, I totally forgot to steer her toward Edgar Rice Burroughs and Douglas Adams. God DAMMIT.
Amelia's Sci-Fi For 9th Graders, As Emailed To Her Buddy
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel. It's a lot different from the book--the monster can talk, and is a sympathetic character. It deals a lot with issues of responsibility toward what you create, and the definitions of humanity.
---
Anything by John Scalzi - Scalzi is one of my favorite science fiction writers. His books are fun romps with a lot of interesting insights. They are, however, full of swearing.
-I'd steer clear of Old Man's War; it's got a slightly graphic sex scene. Its sequel, The Ghost Brigades, works as a standalone. That one has implied sex acts, but they aren't really described in detail. The Ghost Brigades is about a genetically engineered super soldier who is grown in a vat and is "born" as an adult; most of the soldiers are created specifically to fight aliens. Jared, however, has another purpose--they cloned him from a traitor to humanity, and they tried to copy the traitor's consciousness into Jared in order to understand what the traitor will do next. Jared is thus is struggling with trying to figure out his identity and making complex moral choices.
-Redshirts is brilliant, but it also might make the most sense to Star Trek fans. It follows the adventures of a bunch of starship "redshirts"--the nameless guys who die to prove how serious the situation is--who start to wonder why they tend to get killed so much.
-Agent to the Stars might be your best bet from Scalzi. It's told from the point of view of a Hollywood agent who is contacted by aliens: they want to hire him. They want to make peaceful contact with Earth, but the problem is that they are super ugly--so they decide they need an agent to sell themselves to the Earth public with the help of an agent.
---
While it's not quite technological science fiction, Diane Duane has a wonderful YA series beginning with So You Want To Be A Wizard. It follows Nita, her sister Dairine, and Nita's friend Kit, contemporary New York teenagers who don't fit in. They are all nerdy and get bullied a lot. However, in the library one day they receive an offer from the Powers That Be who run the universe: they are invited to become wizards, who battle the evil Lone Power (basically the devil) who invented death and is always trying to increase entropy and chaos. The first book has Nita and Kit making friends with a sentient white hole (like a black hole, but smaller), then going to an alternate New York City to recover a magical book of spells while battling by man-eating helicopters and killer taxi cabs. The later books have them turning into whales, zapping across the galaxy with magic computers, etc..
Note that the first one was written in 1982, so it's a little dated. However, Duane has recently released updated "Millennium Editions" as ebooks, which you can get at her site. If everyone in your class gets an iPad, that might work out well. I usually don't like it when authors "update" their books, but in this case I like it because Duane has such fun with modern technology.
There's also a spinoff series, starting with The Book Of Night With Moon, which is about cat wizards who work at Grand Central Station. At one point in that one Luciano Pavarotti gets attacked by dinosaurs. I read it in 9th grade, but I'm not sure if the kids would like it.
All of the books deal with impressive concepts of creation and mythology, as well as personal choices and the constant battle between good and evil. They also gave kids some really relatable teenage heroes learning to be wizards--fifteen years before Harry Potter. (I particularly like that, unlike with Harry Potter, they integrate their modern lives with their wizardry--you get magical DVD players and iPods and Star Wars references.)
---
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. You know how I feel about it (hee hee!), but it does seem popular with 9th-graders.
---
Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal is a fun little YA book. The main character, Elvie, is 16 years old, pregnant, and living on a spaceship that is a home for expecting teen mothers. Just before she's due, aliens attack the ship and she and the other teen girls have to get through the ship to the escape hatches before the ship crashes to Earth. It's not fancy, but it's a lot of fun.
---
Similarly, Above World by Jenn Reese is a new YA series set in a post-apocalyptic future. In order to survive in the extreme places of Earth, humans have combined genetic engineering and cybernetics to turn themselves into mythical beings, like mermaids (called Kampii), centaurs, winged people, etc.. Each of these groups have splintered off, but now a mad scientist is threatening the communities. It is up to Aluna--a Kampii who still has legs, since she has not grown her tail yet--and her friends to unite the different peoples to save themselves.
Note that it is the first of a series. The second book, Mirage, is out already; the next one is due out soon.
---
One of my favorite short stories is "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight. It's a classic Golden Age scifi story. Aliens make contact with Earth and SEEM to be completely altruistic--stopping war, feeding the hungry, etc. But one guy is a little suspicious of their generosity, and he suspects the answers lie in a book all the aliens seem to be carrying around. It's got an excellent last line.
---
Ray Bradbury writes a lot of great classic science fiction. You probably know about Fahrenheit 451, which everyone thinks is about censorship but is actually about how books bring people together while technology alienates us from each other. (I could argue with Bradbury about that all day.) I prefer his short stories, which manage to give a really good creepy dread feeling (they rarely turn out well for the characters). One of my favorites of those is "The Veldt," which is a diatribe against TV--a father starts to get a little worried that his kids are spending all their time in the "nursery," a room that will create whatever environment the kids want. The kids, whose every whim is fulfilled instantly, become spoiled and demanding and finally terrifying.
Also there's his Martian Chronicles, which is presented as a novel but was originally a bunch of different short stories. It gives a lot of vignettes about human settlement on Mars.
---
Finally, I think you'd LOVE There and Back Again by Pat Murphy (sometimes it appears under her pseudonym, Max Merriwell, but it's the same book). It's a reimagining of The Hobbit as a crazy space adventure. It is AWESOME. Bailey Beldon, a "norbit" (pretty much a space hobbit) is content to live in his asteroid in Earth's asteroid belt and never have adventures. Then a family of clone women show up on his asteroid along with the strange wanderer Gitana to pick up a message pod of theirs he'd found--and the next thing he knows, he's joined them on an adventure across the galaxy very reminiscent of The Hobbit--there is a Riddles in the Dark scene, except instead of under a mountain full of orcs it's set in the belly of a spaceship filled with evil brain-stealing space marauders. Mirkwood Forest is replaced by a nebula (though it's still full of spiders); the Rivendell analogue is a huge space station; the Ring is a complex little device that allows one to step outside of time; and in the end there's a battle with a huge robot dragon.
Murphy makes a conscious effort to follow the Joseph Campbell path of the hero (she even mentions it in an author's note). It's really nice to have some female characters in the mix, too. Note that there are a few references to drug use (they drink a sort of drugged alcohol to get "buzzed" at one point). Probably not a big deal, but again, I'm not sure what the parents would say.
Unfortunately, it looks like the book is out of print--but it's readily available used, for pretty good prices.
---
My sister adds a few:
Scott Westerfield's Uglies is the first in a series of dystopian YA novels. I haven't read them, but they resonate well with teenagers. It's a society where you have to have a radical physical alteration to become "pretty" before you get accepted into society.
---
James Dashner's Mazerunner is another one I haven't read, but it's popular too. And he's a local author, which is a plus!
---
The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey - aliens have taken over, and you don't know who to trust!
---
Of course, Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy is quite popular right now--more dystopian future fiction. Aside from an exciting adventure, it's an interesting commentary on our fascination with media violence and the modern divide between the haves and the have-nots.
So! That's my list! Anyone want to add any?
ETA: Dammit, also forgot Ringworld! I have no idea how 9th graders would react to that one.
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-18 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 02:31 am (UTC)I would suggest "Rule Golden" by Damon Knight. A twist on the Biblical golden rule starts spreading across Earth, instigated by a strange alien and his unwitting human helper.
Also "Moon of Three Rings" by Andre Norton. I actually don't remember any details, but there's a detailed synopsis at Amazon. What I remember is being the target age and being utterly entranced, not least because the story-telling is shared equally by male and female POV, which was a rarity when I read SciFi. The girls shouldn't have to read stories where ALL the protagonists are males.
"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle. It's excellent, and won several awards. Very memorable, with a good female POV -- a mixed-up, muddled teen girl who feels like she's in over her head, but manages to figure it all out and get herself and her brother safely home.
I've read so much in my time, but titles are fleeting. These, however, shine bright in my memory, so I think it's worth your friend checking them out.
Oh! Lots of the Heinlein "juveniles", but I particularly liked Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Teen boy and younger (but smarter) girl get kidnapped by alien, helped by another, kinder, alien, and have all sorts of adventures. Ripping good fun.
And for a real tear-jerker, but a wonderful short story that could lead to some interesting discussions about power corrupting and noble sacrifice, Heinlein's short story The Long Watch. It's very sniffly good.
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. Miner on another planet discovers a race of cute little fuzzy creatures, and has to fight the Major Corporation to prove that they are sentient beings instead of animals. A little boring in the "corporation" chapters, but engrossing as we learn about the Fuzzies, and wait to see who will win. It's available for free download from Project Gutenberg.
Phew! Remembered way more than I thought. I hope your friend finds some of them useful.
.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 03:37 am (UTC)I've got to read Little Fuzzy! I've read Scalzi's reimagining of it (as always, wonderful stuff) and really want to check out the original. Thanks for the Gutenberg heads-up!
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Date: 2013-08-18 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-19 02:38 am (UTC)I also now have some books to get and read.
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Date: 2013-08-17 02:55 am (UTC)McCaffery's The Ship Who Sang? I liked the second (I think?) book in that series better than the first, though.
Verne for the classics. Adams for the fun.
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Date: 2013-08-17 03:43 am (UTC)This is my problem, as well! I read The Book Of Night With Moon in 9th grade (before I got to the Young Wizards, actually), but I suspect it is not normal fare. (I was also completely flummoxed when I took a sci-fi freshman seminar in college and we spent a WEEK learning how to parse unfamiliar technologies/lifestyles/science fiction staples. I was like, "You don't just do that naturally?"
The Fuzzy comparisons might be fun! And she teaches The Hobbit to her 7th-graders, so it might be a nice comparison to do There and Back Again a couple of years down the line.
Verne bored me to tears. He's classic, but give me John Carter any day.
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Date: 2013-08-17 04:40 am (UTC)If I were taking such a class, and got a list like that, I'd probably read most if not all of it.
And I really should go and do the Fuzzy comparison myself! I have the Scalzi. I know I used to have a copy of the Piper, but if I can't find that, it's easily available.
I never took a sci-fi course. We didn't have one in my undergrad and by the time I was in college I had read so much it would probably have just annoyed me anyway. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had completely exhausted all the local library resources for non-adult SF and was well into reading regular adult SF. Which of course wound up with me reading a few things I really wasn't ready for.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 03:24 am (UTC)Early Heinlein juveniles might also work.
An interesting contrast might be Heinlein's Magic Incorporated and Anderson's Operation Chaos. Also comparing the Flandry books to the Retief books, again, to show how different writers treat the same subject.
Yeah, I lean to the classics, so sue me.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 04:13 am (UTC)Oh, dear! I would advise against both 1984 and Animal Farm. I know they're classics, but at that age I hated them -- dull, dry, and depressing -- and I think more age and/or maturity and/or life-recognition than the average 9th-grader has would help a reader appreciate them. As much as I liked (and still like) to read, most of the assigned reading in Jr. High and High School was the type of stuff to turn students away from the enjoyment of reading, and those two were high on the list.
Heinlein, Anderson, Flandry and Retief, OTOH, I heartily endorse -- let the students enjoy entertainment along with the learning.
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Date: 2013-08-17 05:44 am (UTC)You mentioned Ray Bradbury, which I would have too. Because he's awesome, and because The Veldt punches you right in the lions. I mean loins.
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Date: 2013-08-17 07:22 am (UTC)And i agree with the Wizard of Earthsea books suggestion from above, as a teacher i would also do a comparison between the second two and the Studio Ghibli version from a couple of years ago (kids like watching movies :D )
I never read like a year 9 kid either ;)
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Date: 2013-08-17 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 11:18 am (UTC)I liked "Tunnel in the Sky" (a Heinlein juvenile), which wiki compares to Lord of the Flies: "As in Lord of the Flies, which had been published a year earlier, isolation reveals the true natures of the students as individuals, but it also demonstrates some of the constants of human existence as a social animal. Its underlying themes run counter to those in Lord of the Flies, however, in that it shows a belief in the inherent strength of humans as proto-adults that can self-organize rather than descend into barbarism. Some of the students fall victim to their own foolishness, and others turn out to be thugs, but that is a part of human nature, just as the counter-trends take the group as a whole towards the beginnings of a stable society. The numerous political crises of the fledgling colony illustrate the need for legitimacy in a government appropriate for the society it administers, another common theme in Heinlein's books."
I also liked "Podkayne of Mars", and -- checking wiki -- can see a lot of real-world and teen-specific parallels that could be made. Things like sibling rivalry, terrorism and airport security, the corporate monopoly ultra-capitalism of Venus, racism, and politics that most teens are insulated from. There are a couple of points I recall that might be a problem, such as when Podkayne overhears fellow ship passengers gossiping about her and her uncle, "they're two different races, she's clearly sharing his bed not his bloodline". I don't recall exactly how the passage goes. There's also an illegal drug called happy dust, and although none of Podkayne's family use it I think Podkayne's little brother (amoral and possibly sociopathic) drugs one of their kidnappers with it so they can escape.
Asimov's "The Last Question" is a short story that might or might not be offensive to very devout Christians. It's about a supercomputer being asked how to stop or fix the heat death of the universe for the sake of humanity, and ends with the supercomputer's final iteration -- itself plus all the trillions of human uploads, on a server in hyperspace outside the dead universe -- having no one to give the answer to, so it restarts the universe with "Let there be light."
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Date: 2013-08-17 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 02:50 pm (UTC)(The Bujold story for free is a short story, 'The Mountains of Mourning', which is a murder mystery that Bujold wrote with the idea to show that having a truth drug doesn't eliminate the needs of a murder investigation. It's also got some good stuff about class and education and disability: basically the main character is the rich son of nobility and ready to serve his planet by Having Adventures in the Military, but his father asks him to ride up to the poor, technologically-undeveloped hills to act as judge because a hill woman came down and complained that the local government was refusing to investigate the death of her infant daughter. The town suspects it was infanticide since the baby was born with a clef palate, and the fact the woman's husband is missing is Very Suspicious.)
Octavia Butler is another classic, but I've only read a few of her books and your English teacher friend might not want to deal with sexual themes (and Parable of the Talents features a Christian-based theocracy in the USA and a lot of sexual violence, which could go over like a sack of hammers).
I know I loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at that age. Sex is mentioned a lot, but never shown. The narrator is also part of a polygamous marriage, which I found interesting in the sense that Heinlein points out in text that family structures change depending on society's needs (that lunar polygamy was an adaptation to create stability in a society that had neither governmental institutions nor biological extended families, so people created kinship networks by groups of adults). Which was an Important Idea to me as a wee one. The main plot -- three people and an AI plot an independence movement -- was interesting. The book is pretty heavy-handedly libertarian, but at least it got me thinking about the role of government. (I didn't always agree with Robert Heinlein, but I could argue with his books and felt coherent.)
* One of the main characters was born as a result of rape. She doesn't know this for most of the book and is looking for her mother.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 05:18 pm (UTC)In 9th grade, for hard sci-fi (well actually the summer after 9th grade I think) we read a ton of Ron Goulart - my friend's dad had all the Goulart books - they're short too.
For something lighter, she might look at Robert Asprin's Phule's Company series - from what I remember there wasn't much in the way of salty language or sex - lots of aliens working and living together, it's nominally a military-based series, but the point is that they find ways to achieve their mission without shooting anyone, because it's a band of misfits who aren't good soldiers.
Veronica Roth's DIvergent series is good, and apparently coming to a movie theatre near you, so that tends to get kids excited :)
no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 09:50 pm (UTC)I loved A Wrinkle In Time (actually, I'd aim that younger than high school freshmen), liked A Wind At the Door, hated (at the time I read it, can barely remember anything about) A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and couldn't stand Many Waters the first time I read it but gave it another chance much later and liked it.
Ubik by Philip K. Dick is one of his more accessible novels. Personally I tend to prefer his short stories to his novels (his strength is in his premises, not so much in characterization). It's worth introducing them to the master of the ontological riff. I'm ashamed to say I've never actually read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The Man In The High Castle is a classic of the alternate history genre, but frankly I couldn't get very far into it because the main character is too unsympathetic. VALIS is...kind of impenetrable.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-18 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-19 07:37 pm (UTC)We read Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 in a similar age group, I think. (It's hard to remember, as I was already devouring Foundation and Empire and Dune by that point)