Little Brother- Corey Doctorow

OK, Before I go any further into this review, I need to make a few things clear. 1. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but 2. it skews a bit older than my normal reading audience. It's appropriate for late middle schoolers/high schoolers. I firmly believe that it has important things to say (for every American, regardless of age), but there are some very high school aged shenanigans going on throughout the story.

And what a story it is. Set in San Francisco, it tells the story of Marcus Yallow and his tech-savvy, hackery friends. Marcus is your fairly typical high school student: bright, but bored in school, obsessed with girls, and more concerned with the net and computer games than his classwork or grades.

Little Brother takes place in a world recognizably our own, but different as well. Students at Marcus's school all have school issued laptops that have tight security restrictions and monitor key strokes and web histories. Cameras in classrooms were declared an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but all students are monitored by gait recognition software that can recognize any individual by their specific style of walking. (Marcus and his friends have a rather ingenious way of spoiling these cameras which I won't reveal here.)

One day, Marcus and his friends are ditching school to participate in an online game called Harajuku Fun Madness. The game combines online scavenger hunts with realworld locations. While trying to find a clue, San Francisco is struck by a devastating terrorist attack. While trying to tack cover form the explosions, Marcus and his friends, in a classic case of wrong place at the wrong time, are arrested by homeland security troops in the immediate aftermath.

Without trial or official arrests, they are taken to a secret location and interrogated repeatedly and mercilessly. Marcus initially tries to be defiant, but eventually breaks and answers all their questions.

In the wake of the attacks, Homeland Security effectively takes over San Francisco. Citizens are monitored constantly and subjected to random and not so random stops and searches. Marcus begins to foment a resistance to these tactics by organizing people through the internet. He is immediately branded a terrorist and the rest of the book plays out as a game of cat and mouse with Homeland Security searching for Marcus, and Marcus coming to terms with the newfound responsibilities of leadership and resistance.

I loved Little Brother because of the questions it implicitly forces the reader to ask himself. Is dissent patriotic? Is safety more important than freedom? Is it our right or obligation to protest an unjust law of government action? Are the words of our founders as applicable today as they were in 1776?

Little Brother is an important book, and in the wake of NSA wire tapping scandals and prisoner abuses at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay, it should be required reading for every free-thinking American.

I'll leave you with the following quote of The Declaration of Independence which appears throughout the book. Interpret it how you see fit...

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

When You Reach Me- Rebecca Stead

Sorry gentle reader(s). Once again, an unforgivably long period of time has passed between my reviews. Life, as they say, happens, but I now find myself with a bit of free time, and a stack of books three feet high that I'm going to try and get through. In addition to this post, look for a review of Neil Gaiman's latest coming soon as well.

I didn't get a chance to do a post on this year's American Library Association (most notably the Caldecott and Newbery Awards- for a complete list of this years winners and honorees go here.) but I wanted to make sure that this year's Newbery winner, When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead got its proper due in these hallowed yet electronic pages.

When You Reach Me is nothing short of an amazing and mesmerizing second novel from Rebecca Stead. She effortlessly blends at least three genres (realistic fiction, mystery, and science fiction, and throw in historical fiction to boot as the book is set in 1979.) and her characters and depiction of New York City never once seem forced or contrived.

In the story, Miranda is a regular, everyday sixth grader living in 1978-1979 New York City. Her mother is a paralegal who is training to appear on the game show The 20,000 Dollar Pyramid. Like many sixth graders, Miranda struggles with friendships, boys, money, her mother, school, bullies, and, oh yes, mysterious anonymous letters that know too much about her, and appear to be sent from the future.

It's thee letters that make When You Reach Me so great. The first reads:

I'm coming to save your friends life and my own.

I ask two favors.

First, you must write me a letter.

Miranda has no idea where the letter came from or who sent it. As more letters appear, it is clear that the author knows things about the future that no one should, and Mira becomes increasingly enmeshed in what appears to be prophecy. The juxtaposition of Mira's everyday sixth grade life and the mysteries of time travel shouldn't work at all, yet all aspects of the plot come together seamlessly and the resolution (like all truly great resolutions should) leaves the reader thinking, pondering, and mulling for days afterwards. Couple this with an extended running homage to Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, and you have a book truly worthy of the Newbery's lofty pedigree. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Stead's Site

The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a bit (massive understatement!) of a departure for people interested in her best selling Underland series (Gregor the Overlander et al...). Before I type another word, I have to state that THG is not a book intended for my usual target audience of upper elementary school readers. Unless you're in middle school or beyond, THG is NOT the book for you.

Collins has created a very bleak, distopian future in a barely recognizable North America. The United States and other sovereign nations have imploded upon themselves so long ago that they aren't even remembered. Indeed, citizens in the book have only the vaguest idea that there once existed a land known as "North America." Now, there is one capitol city known as Panem. The capitol is surrounded by 12 subservient client states known as districts.

Sometime in the not too distant past, the districts rebelled against Penam which ruled over them like a feudal lord. Originally, there were 13 districts, but the last was wiped out by the capitol during the failed uprising. Life in the Districts became miserable. Families scrape together subsistence-level farming and hunting while the citizens of Penam live lives of incomprehensible luxury for the citizens of the Districts. In order to further punish the 12 remaining districts, the Hunger Games were established.

The premise of the games is brutally simple. Each year during a ceremony called "The Reaping," one boy and one girl ages 12-18 are chosen from each district. Each eligible child has one name in the lottery for each birthday they have between 12 and 18. (Here, Collins borrows heavily from Shirley Jackson's classic story "The Lottery," but hey if you're going to borrow, borrow from the best.) Once chosen you are removed to the capitol where you will participate in the games in a specially prepared arena. Once in the arena, contestants are given weapons and supplies, and the only rule is that competitors kill each other until only one remains. According to the book, Collins is focusing this book (and its subsequent sequels) on "the effects of war and violence on those coming of age." The violence is brutal, intense, but not gratuitous. The games are broadcast live in every district, and everyone is forced to watch them, just another reminder of Panem's dominance over the defeated Districts.

In an interview with scholastic Collins said, "It's hard to choose one element that inspired The Hunger Games," says Suzanne. "Probably the first seeds were planted when, as an eight-year-old with a mythology obsession, I read the story of Theseus. The myth told how in punishment for past deeds, Athens periodically had to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete where they were thrown in the Labyrinth and devoured by the monstrous Minotaur. Even as a third grader, I could appreciate the ruthlessness of this message. ‘Mess with us and we'll do something worse than kill you. We'll kill your children.'

The story centers around Katniss Everdeen from the bleak, coal-producing District 12. Through a heartbreaking series of circumstances (I won't spoil it, but it's well done, if not a mite predictable), Katniss ends up volunteering herself for the games. Within a day, she and her fellow District 12 contestant Peeta are being whipped off to the capitol in preparation for the competition.

During these scenes Collins has fun skewering the pampered and ridiculous life of the citizens of Panem, especially when contrasted with the hardscrabble existence of people in the Districts. Presented with abundant food for the first time in their lives, Katniss and Peeta eat to the point of illness. Katniss revels in the luxury, but never forgets a promise she mad to win the games and return home. (It has to do with the circumstances that found her volunteering for the games in the first place.)

The final portion of the book focuses the games themselves. As one would expect, there are some very gruesome scenes here. Collins maintains suspense throughout, an admirable feat, given that we are almost certain of the ultimate outcome as far as who the winner will be. (If you're not sure about what I'm talking about, then I'm not telling...)

Overall, Collins has created a disturbing yet plausible future. These distopian visions are some of my favorite types of stories, and although it comes close at times, it doesn't quite add up to my all-time favorite in the genre, Richard Bachman's The Long Walk. THG is the first book in a proposed trilogy, but I could not find any information on any forthcoming volumes. Recommended, but only for readers middle school and up.