My kids are voracious readers. My eldest 2 (13 and 11) just read Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card. I was impressed by their enthusiastic praise for this book. (I’m reading it now. Seems like a fun read. But SciFi is not my genre of choice.) They are very eager to read Ender’s Game.
I was hoping some of you SciFi fans out there might be able to recommend other authors, series, or titles for junior high kids. Up til now the 13 year old has been into mysteries, historical fiction and fantasy (Redwall). The 11 year old reads nonfiction war history (especially WWII), books about planes and ships, and the Animorphs series. He is a huge Star Wars and Star Trek fan.
My ten-year-old daughter just finished Philip Pullman’s THE GOLDEN COMPASS yesterday, after starting it the day before and pretty much doing nothing else but read it.
It’s the first of a fantasy trilogy (followed by THE SUBTLE KNIFE and THE AMBER SPYGLASS) which has gotten a pretty good amount of media attention lately, and has been called “Narnia books for agnostics.”
I won’t bother describing it beyond the fact that it’s set in Oxford and deals with “personal daemons.” Bring it up on Amazon; there are nearly 600 reviews.
For something more Science-Fictiony, you won’t go wrong with the short stories of Ray Bradbury, plus the novels THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and DANDELION WINE.
If they like the hardware aspect of SF, my daughter also loved Robert Heinlein’s HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL. Witty/smirky and very funny narration by a teenage protagonist…like Holden Caulfield with a positive attitude.
Oh, yeah…she was also very big on Lois Lowry’s THE GIVER, which won the Newbury Medal about 10 years back. I read it myself a couple months ago. It snapped my stix.
Near-future dystopian novel that really sticks in your head.
Philip Pullman is quite marvelous. I would second him heartily.
If your kids are interested in mythology, I would add Susan Cooper. She integrates native Celtic and Arthurian mythology seamlessly in her The Dark Is Rising tetrology. Though it didn’t bother me when I read her works as a child, the theme of predestination and binary morality run through the entire series.
You can’t go wrong with The Chronicles of Narnia. by CS Lewis. Heavy on the religious and mythical allusion, your kids will love them now and appreciate them later.
I wish I had read The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany when I was a child. I might have actually grown up to be a better person.
Hope this helps. If you need more recommendations, believe me, I’ve got 'em.
Thanks. Please make your lists as exhaustive as you will. I’ll compile them into a master list my kids can take to the library with them. These are the type of kids who take out 5-6 books at a time from the library, start reading them in the car on the way home, and have no problem reading even lengthy books in a day or two. We have to tell them to turn out the light and go to bed. You know the deal.
We were given the Narnia series a few years back, I read them to all my kids, and I know at least the oldest girl has reread them at least once.
I started about that age, reading The White Mountains trilogy, the works of Lester del Rey, the Heinlein boyscout novels (Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, Have Space suit etc., The Star Beast, Rocket Ship Galileo), then branched out into his other stuff. I’d also recommend the Darkover novels and the Pern novels. Asimov wrote some books under the pseudonym Paul French (main character named Lucky Starr? don’t remember titles) which would be good for kids.
Okay, tracer. Please explain the difference? As I attempted it indicate in my OP (That’s original post, not operations) neither SciFi nor science fiction are my balliwick. So I’ afraid I cannot “go back” to where I never came from. (Tho in college, my buddy’s band was called “Nines”, as an homage to Plan 9. I’m sure that is what you were thinking of.)
I would appreciate it if you could accompany your condescension with some information. Or not.
Have they done any Verne or Wells? I got a MAJOR kick out of the Victorian filigree when I was a kid/teen.
Start 'em with the Verne classics…20,000 LEAGUES, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, etc. Then move on to the oddball ones like ROBUR THE CONQUEROR and THE BEGUM’S FORTUNE and PROPELLOR ISLAND and HECTOR SERVADAC. I got my daughter an old copy of DR. OX’S EXPERIMENT for Xmas…a truly amusing early novella about a physiologist who floods a sleepy Belgian village with pure oxygen over a period of weeks. Hi-jinks ensue!
Wells’ short stories are a treasure. Not to mention the “scientific romances” THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE TIME MACHINE, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, etc.
tracer: Oh, pooh on you. People who like SF are ALLOWED to say “sci fi.” Kinda like gays calling each other “queer” when they’re alone together.
Dins: Science fiction buffs disdain the term “sci fi,” preferring “SF” as the shorthand.
This is due to the thousands of condescending reviews and articles in the mainstream press over the years, which say things like “SCI FI: IT’S NOT JUST FOR MORONS ANY MORE. Whoever thought that these crappy Sci Fi novels had pretensions to Real Literature? But in {insert title here} there’s more to the plot than just ray guns and bug-eyed monsters!”
Last year I remember my boy’s favorite book was 20,000 Leagues. And he is really interested in time travel. Think he saw the old movie, but unsure whether he’s read the book. I’ll add them to the list.
A fairly recent addition to the juvenile SF genre is David Feintuch’s Seafort Saga. I read them last year (I’m 36), but I think anyone over ten could enjoy them. They sort of treat the Navy like Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) treated the Army. Sort of like Horatio Hornblower in space. The first in the series is called Midshipman’s Hope.
The Tripod Trilogy by John Christopher. Probably the best hard SF ever written for adolecents.
Anything Asimov wrote is readable by smart kids this age–he is a very straightforward author. I, Robot is a good place to start.
L’Engle is very good, althought she wavers on the line between Fantasy and SF (not that that is a bad thing). The trilogy to start with is A Wrinkle in Time, {i]A wind in the Door* and A Swiftly Tilting Planet.
These are old, but both my husband and I really enjoyed the Alvin Ferninand books as children. I dont know who wrote them, and they are surely out of print, but your library likely has them–look for titles that start with “Alvin’s” like “Alvin’s Secret Code”
The Danny Dunn books are from the same era and also very fun. The science may be a bit out of date but i dont think that will warp a kid for life. Again, there entered my world before I was aware of authors, so I dont know who wrote them. Look for titles like “Danny Dunn and the . . .”
They might enjoy Diana Wynne Jones, although most of her stuff is pure fantasy. But see if your library has a copy of The Homeward Bounders. If they like the Ender books, they will like this.
Personally, I prefer the term speculative fiction. Has a nice cachet to it, and it means you can file Harlan Ellison with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges.
Anyway, on to the topic:
Narnia series by CS Lewis
The Men in the Moon, by HG Wells
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
The Wind Singer, by someone who I don’t remember - it’s a new one.
Guns of the South, by Harry Turtledove - especially good for the history wonks.
Flatland
1984
Brave New World
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
If you can find a copy or two, Isaac Asimov put together an anthology entitled “Tomorrow’s Children: Eighteen Tales of Fantasy and Science Fiction,” that has some really rocking stuff in it. It was a Doubleday 1966 book, but your local library might have a copy.
He doesn’t write a lot of science fiction, but anything by Terry Pratchett (most notably the Discworld fantasy series) gets an enthusiastic thumbs up in my book. His books tend to be humorous (both subtle and not), thought-provoking, and insightful; makes Harry Potter and The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy seem like second-rate stuff by comparison IMO.
The only lament is that Pratchett is most reknown outside of the United States. The good news is that that’s been changing recently, and any decent-sized bookstore should have a good assortment of novels (though us die-hard junkies simply pay extra to have them shipped from overseas, but I digress…).
Robert Heinlein’s finest work ( IMHO, naturally ) was his “juvenile” science fiction written mostly in the 50’s. The first novel I ever read was The Red Planet, by the same. Other fun books include The Starbeast, Citizen of the Galaxy, Starman Jones, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, Tunnel in the Sky, Podkayne of Mars, The Rolling Stones, and a few others I’m probably forgetting. All are for younger readers ( early and mid-teens ) and are really well-written.
Slightly more sophisticated ( and practically a libertarian treatise ) is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which I read when I was about 12 and am particularly fond of ( despite not being a libertarian ). Also novellas like Double Star and The Door into Summer.
Has anyone mentioned Lloyd Alexander’s Taran series yet? Great fantasy series for younger readers based loosely on Welsh mythology. There’s five of them and I forget all the titles, but any good book store will carry them, probably as a box set.
Well, they aren’t Science Fiction, but when I was in the eight grade, my teacher got me into Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy. I’d definately like to see my kid’s reaction to them.
I was very much into Anne McCaffrey when I was that age. Both the “Dragonsong” series (which is for kids) and the “DragonRiders” series (more for adults.)
Piers Anthony is another author who often gets blasted by adults, but I think a kid would really like his stuff.
I think I read “The Keeper of the Isis Light” by Monica Hughes when I was about 8, and I still remember it to this day. I see it’s still in print, so I must not be the only one.
It’s also due to the fact that there’s no long “i” sound in “fiction.”
(And by “you” in my earlier message, I meant “you all.” It wasn’t my intent to be condescending to dinsdale; it was merely my intent to be condescending to everybody. And to have an opportunity to hold my nose high in the air. Don’t let 'em fool you – arrogance is great!)
). Also novellas like Double Star and The Door into Summer.