Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Classic Science Fiction Novels, March 2012

Ender's Game is the opening volume in one of the most acclaimed series of the present day science fiction community. Ender Wiggin is a brilliant student soldier, earning accolades and advancements in the Battle School with his tactics and mission successes. Earth is broken into three factions but those three factions have united in the shadow of the threat from the Formics, a bug alien race bent on wiping out the human race. Ender is the key to human survival but Card does a brilliant job in making Ender into a fully formed character; one readers can relate to and yet also find contemptible at times, and one who revels in his success but is also torn and tinged with guilt by his actions. The novel is intense and the game is brutal. A film is due next year.

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Classic Science Fiction Novels, March 2012

While holding to a theme of censorship in its underbelly, Bradbury's novel of warning was more a notion that the coming explosion of television and other delivery vehicles of mass media entertainment would erode the interest in books. While we don't currently have laws against books and burn them, Bradbury is entirely prescient in terms of the effects of television and radio and internet access and how it has negatively effected social interaction and reading, in particular. Hidden in this work are also snapshots of future ideas, like flatscreen tvs with multi-picture viewing, bluetooth headphones and Walkman-style radio headsets.

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Dune by Frank Herbert

Classic Science Fiction Novels, March 2012

Hailed by most as the greatest science fiction novel of all time. Dune is the story of Paul Atreides and his struggles as political power plays run rampant as forces from across the empire clash to take hold of the planet Arrakis and it's "spice," which is the most valuable substance known in the universe. Dune covers all the bases, from politics to ecological concerns, to the rise and fall of empires and the dangers of hero worship. Frank Herbert would follow up Dune with five sequels. The saga has continued under the authorship of his son, Brian, and author Kevin J. Anderson.

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If Only by Carole Geithner

Corinna's world is crushed after her mother dies of cancer. How does she get through the funeral, trays of ziti, a father who can't communicate, the first day of school, Mother's Day, people who don't know what to say, and the entire eighth-grade year?

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March 2012

March’s roundup of Cool & New Books includes Carl Hiaasen’s CHOMP, an eco-mystery set in the world of reality television that will lead young Wahoo Cray into an adventure and a life-changing friendship; SEEDS OF REBELLION, the second installment in Brandon Mull's Beyonders series, in which Jason Walker must return to Lyrian to save his friends and help them defeat the evil emperor Maldor; PINCH HIT, Tim Green’s latest sports novel that introduces readers to Sam and Trevor, two boys who realize they are twins separated at birth and decide to switch places with each other; and ILLUSIONOLOGY, the newest discovery in the famed ’Ology series, which describes 25 tricks for aspiring young magicians --- ranging from ancient illusions to Houdini's greatest acts.

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Muncle Trogg by Janet Foxley

Giants live on top of Mount Grumble, hidden from humans below. But not all of them are big. Muncle Trogg is so small that he's laughed at by the others for being human-sized. Fed up, he decides to take a look at the “Smallings” he's meant to look like.
 

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Jacqueline Woodson, author of Beneath a Meth Moon

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