Kidliterate

More Sci-Fi For Kids

Over at Locus Magazine, there's a great post full of sci-fi recommendations for young people written by Karen Meisner, an editor over at Strange Horizons (disclaimer: Karen and I have "known" one another online for...ever.) It's such a great idea I wanted to add some of my own.

SPACEHEADZ! by Jon Scieszka: I just spent three days with Mr. Scieszka, driving him around to five school visits and a library event, and I have to tell you - there is nothing more likely to re-inspire a children's book person like spending three days with Mr. Ambassador. Having book talked SPACEHEADZ about 25 times at 5 different schools, I can say that I am extremely familiar with this series - and I LOVE it. It's about a boy named Michael K who is starting at a new school, super nervous about fitting in and making the right friends. And who are the first two kids he meets? Bob and Jennifer, who tell them that they're aliens, and that their leader, Major Fluffy, is disguised as the class hamster. They're there to get 3.14 million + 1 Earthlings to sign on to be Spaceheadz, or their planet will shut Earth off. They're on the run from the AAA (the Anti-Alien Agency, natch) and need Michael K's help. (His response? "Please don't sit next to me.") It is awesome; perfect for reluctant boys especially, and very interactive. There are several related websites and an iPhone app I love called FLUFFY SPEAKS, where you can translate any language into Hamster. 

ALIENS ON VACATION by Clete Barrett Smith: I was thrilled when the rest of the New Voices committee agreed with me about this one, too. Scrub is forced to go stay with his grandmother for the summer, but everything changes when he learns that the B&B she runs is actually filled with portals to other planets, and she plays hosts to aliens who want to spend their vacations on Earth. 

IGNATIUS MACFARLAND: FREQUENAUT! by Paul Feig: I can never understand why this series hasn't broken out. I raved about this book back in 2008. For some reason the permalink to this post is being cranky, but if you go here and scroll down to 7/18, the review is there. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

SCIENCE FAIR by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson: super funny story of aliens who trick not-so-smart arrogant rich kids into building parts of a superweapon for their science fair project (so the aliens can then use the weapon to take over the earth), and the brilliant middle-class kids who bring the whole plot down. 

THE SEARCH FOR WONDLA by Tony DiTerlizzi: This beautifully illustrated novel tells the story of Eva Nine, a young human girl raised underground by a robot named Muthr. When her home is destroyed, Eva is forced aboveground where she learns that she is the only human on the planet. She must go on a quest to find others like her, and ultimately, a home. 

THE CITY OF EMBER by Jeanne DuPrau: Electricity powers the city of Ember, and light ends at the city's edge. But the lights are starting to go out, and there doesn't seem to be any way of stopping it - until Lina and Doon find a mysterious document that might just show them the way to save everyone. 

COSMIC by Frank Cottrell Boyce: 12-year-old Liam is tall enough to be mistaken for an adult, and cons his way into winning a contest to chaperone four other kids on a trip into outer space. What happens when the kids break the ship and look to Liam - the "adult" - to fix everything?

SIMON BLOOM: THE GRAVITY KEEPER by Michael Reisman": Simon stumbles upon the teacher's edition of his science book, which actually allows him to manipulate the laws of physics. Naturally, evil people seek said book, and Simon and his friends must keep it out of their hands.

KAPUT AND ZOSKY by Lewis Trondheim: graphic novel about two unbelievably incompetent aliens who make attempt after hapless attempt to take over the universe.

ASTRONAUT ACADEMY by Dave Roman: first in a graphic novel series about a former super hero who's just trying to blend in at the Astronaut Academy. If only it wasn't for the pesky robot doppleganger who's trying to kill him...

many books by Margaret Peterson Haddix: Haddix can satisfy many a yearning for this type of book. TURNABOUT; the SHADOW CHILDREN series; and THE MISSING series are all terrific sci-fi books for late elementary/early middle school-aged kids, and high level younger readers will love them too.

THRESHOLDS by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

When Maya's best friend Stephanie died from cancer, her world fell apart. When her father's job became uncertain, he and her mother took the opportunity to give the family a fresh start and moved from Iowa to Oregon. There are a lot of different things about their new town, including the people who live in the apartment building next door (who dress strangely and stick close to home) and, oh yeah, there's the fairy that flies into Maya's room one night. When Maya wakes up the next morning, she thinks it was a dream - until she finds gold sparkly dust on the sheets. And the strange just keeps on coming: she meets her next door neighbors, and they use words she's never heard of; a strange boy keeps asking her where the portal is; her neighbors are able to smell the fairy dust on her. Finally, at the end of her first day in her new school, Portal Boy shows up again and gets her to agree to take care of something he's stolen. Now she has a magical egg in her wrist, which is going to hatch into...something. Her next door neighbors are the only people with the power necessary to help her: they are the guardians of portals to other worlds, including the one where her egg came from. They've opened a door to another world for Maya, and it is one that will change her forever. This is my first Nina Kiriki Hoffman novel (and her first for kids), but it won't be my last. I LOVED this. I think the best thing about this (besides the fantastic writing) is that it's not really fantasy, and it's not really science fiction. It is an incredibly cool mix of the two, very unlike anything else I've read and yet comfortably set in our modern world with a main character anyone can relate to. Maya's grief over Stephanie gently powers a lot of her actions, which gives the whole book an undercurrent that really showcases Hoffman's writing. It's an incredibly realistic portrayal of adolescent emotion, which is unusual in a book in this genre. I also loved watching Maya deal with her troubles partially through art, taking everything down in her omnipresent sketchpad. So not only do we have fantasy, scifi, wonderful writing, and compelling characters, but we also have messages of the importance of art in our lives and of the power of grief. It's a lot to fit into one middle-grade book, but Hoffman makes it look effortless. Sequel, please.

I AM NUMBER FOUR by Pittacus Lore

I could boil this review down to five words:  THIS BOOK RULES THE WORLD. or how about THIS BOOK ROCKED MY SOCKS. or GIVE ME THE SEQUEL NOW. or OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. Any of those, really. I tore through this book today and am now completely obsessed. COMPLETELY. When a publisher puts the kind of push behind a book like HarperCollins has done with this book, it often ends up feeling like smoke and mirrors. This book, however, deserves the massive amount of hype that it has gotten. Have I mentioned that it's awesome? Lorien is a planet three hundred million miles away from Earth. Its entire population was killed by another race (the Mogadorians) - except for nine gifted children and their guardians. The 18 survivors fled to Earth where they have been hiding among us, waiting to grow into their Legacies (special powers that many of the Lorien people possess), fight the Mogadorians, and return to revive their home planet. A two-part charm was put on the children before they left: they can only be killed in a certain order, and because of their link, each instantly knows if one of their kind has been killed. Our protagonist is Number Four, fifteen years old, and at the beginning of the book, he has just learned that Number Three has died.  John (his new alias) and his guardian, Henri, flee their current home for a small town in Ohio. They move constantly, changing identities, locations, schools in their ongoing attempt to elude the Mogadorians who followed them to Earth. Their life is one of constant vigilance, and it is a life that "John" has tired of as he has gotten older. At his new school, he clashes immediately with the football star and crushes on the star's ex-girlfriend, which leads to a series of events that threaten to expose him for who he truly is. As his Legacies finally begin to develop, as does his new relationship, he becomes less and less certain that the way he is leading his life is sustainable. And every day, Henri becomes more convinced that the evil they are fleeing is growing closer. This is one of those novels that you can't describe in too much depth because one tiny spoiler could ruin everything. So I can tell you this: it's a long book (440 pages) yet there's not one wasted word. The characters are flawed and believable and familiar in the best of ways. The twists surprised me and the bad guys are both original and scary. And the writing is SO GOOD. Imagine my surprise when I Googled Pittacus Lore and learned that he is two people: a writer named Jobie Hughes..and JAMES FREY. Yes, that James Frey. People are surprising me every day in the world of young adult fiction; today is no different. Like the best of collaborative works, I have no idea where one author begins and the other ends. I am, it must be said, a little desperate for the sequel to I AM NUMBER FOUR. I recommend joining me in my obsession as soon as possible. After all, there are still eleven days left until the release of MOCKINGJAY.

LOOKING AHEAD: Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut! by Paul Feig

This is one of my four (so far) favorite fall books, and definitely my favorite fall middle-grade release. (No, I haven't told you about my other three yet; patience, dear readers.)

My love for Paul Feig already knew no bounds. I am a huge fan of the late, lamented TV show Freaks and Geeks (seriously huge - I own the $140 super DVD set that came in a replica yearbook with ninety bazillion hours of extras), and I also think his two memoirs of earlier life as a supergeek (Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence and Superstud)  are hilarious. So when I found out that Paul (I can call you Paul, right?) was writing a kids' novel I was pretty excited. And then the galley came and I was even more excited. So excited that I slipped the only copy off the galley shelf at the bookstore where I used to work and moved it with me to St. Louis. I finally unpacked that box last week, and there was Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut! staring up at me. Read me, read me, it implored. And so I did.

Dude. This is one funny book. This is one thrilling book. This is one fine middle-grade novel. It's sci-fi! It's comedy! It's freaking fantastic. Ignatius (Iggy) is one of those kids who is destined to be bullied in school, and he is. He has two friends who are equally bully-able, and they are walking targets for the school's population of buttheads. Iggy has grown weary of it all and continually wishes that an alien might spot him one day and whisk him off to another planet. When this doesn't happen, he decides that maybe he could build a rocket and blast himself into space, where of course an alien civilization will take him in and change his life. So the kids build this hilariously incompetent rocket out of a garbage can and license plates and a lot of other crap, and then one of them swipes his brother's illegal fireworks stash and they clean the gunpowder out of the fireworks and fill a coffee can with it (Uh...guys? Bad idea, okay?). They light the can on fire, and Iggy decides at the last minute that maybe this is a bad idea, but his backpack gets stuck on something and he can't get out of the garbage can rocket and then...BOOM.

When he comes to, he seems to be in the middle of the same field. Except the only thing that's the same is the basic terrain. What he doesn't yet know is that the explosion shifted him into another Frequency - like an alternate universe. He's technically in the same place, just slightly sideways. He meets a 16 year old girl named Karen who had a chemistry lab accident a year ago, which is how she ended up in this other Frequency, which is otherwise populated by a variety of bizarre alien creatures. Even more bizarre: five years back, a teacher at the high school in Iggy's neighborhood was supposedly killed when his house exploded. The teacher's in this Frequency, too, except he's reinvented himself as the President of the aliens and taken over the world. Karen is trying to stop him, and she wants Iggy to help her. Iggy just wants to get back to his own Frequency. However, it seems that once you become a Frequenaut, getting out of your current Frequency isn't as easy as it seems - especially not when your only friend is a one-woman revolutionary band and is being hunted by the President's army.

The plot is like nothing I've ever read before, and the book is what we'd been wishing for at the bookstore for years - not just sci-fi, but funny sci-fi. This is going to be a great book for kids who like stuff like The Mysterious Benedict Society - smart kids who like their adventure mixed up with a little comedy and a whole lot of brain activity. I love this book and I hope Paul Feig comes to St. Louis so I can tell him how much I love it in person.

Publisher: Little, Brown Publication Date: September 1, 2008