Saturday, September 8, 2012

Ender's Game: Earth is Losing...

After decades of battle against insect-like aliens, we still haven't found a general who can defeat them.We're running out of soldiers, we're running out of spaceships, and we're running out of hope. But maybe, with the right training, one special boy can be molded into a hero.

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, tells the story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, who's only six when he's recruited to Battle School to learn strategies to defeat the aliens. I'm excited to see the movie adaptation next year, but you should definitely read it first, so why not now, before the hype starts and you hear spoilers?



Although it's not considered a "teen book," many teens first read it while they're close to Ender's age. His struggles with family, authority figures, and peers who bully him might be set in the future, but ring true right now. The zero-gravity battle room and battle simulations are also very exciting to read about. My favorite part about it is how smart Ender and the other child characters are -- Orson Scott Card is that rare author who remembers what being a kid is like, and doesn't dumb down or romanticize it.

If you like it, there are a bunch of sequels, and also the "Shadow" series that sort of reboots it by telling it from another character's perspective (and changing everything you thought you knew the first time around).

Happy reading!
Jenny

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