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I love how the different character’s personalities are introduced during the continuation of the story. This was inappropriate for a teen book, but it was still amusing to read. Find American Royals by Katherine McGee on the library catalogue.
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham has the author focusing on a variety of issues that individuals are constantly challenged with in life. The people of the fictional village of Waknuk have to struggle against constant prejudice, intolerance, and ignorance within their community. There is a constant theme of using faith as a source of control over the population, as the novel beckons its readers to understand how fear has the ability to shape and manipulate society.
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The real world is boring; it’s dull, unimaginative and uninventive, so we create fantasies as a way to escape into a magical, different, unique world. We watch movies or plays to experience something more interesting than the harsh realities of everyday life, so we dream. Authors like C.S Lewis and J.K Rowling show us this gloomy world, and then beneath everything they give us something extraordinary. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, four rather ordinary children, Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy are about to take an exceptional adventure. When they come across a wardrobe, there is a path into a more interesting realm, in which they experience something spectacular.
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Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis has the Pevensie siblings spending a whole year dreaming about returning to Narnia. However, when they finally get pulled back into Narnia, they realize a very important thing, “Things never happen the same way twice.” They then discover time passes differently in Narnia, and that thousands of years had already passed and everyone they knew has passed on. Narnia has been corrupted by a cruel, cold blooded leader who killed his way to his spot, and now the children have to gather up the talking animal’s courage in order to fight back against the tyrant and have circumstances return to a peaceful state.
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The Miserable Mill by Lewis Snicket has the children heading to Paltryville where they hope to uncover more of their parents’ past. They arrive at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill where they meet “Sir”, the owner of the mill and his pushover partner “Charles”. They make a deal with Sir and agree to work at the Lumbermill until Violet comes of age.
“The deal is this: I will try to make sure that Count Olaf and his associates never go anywhere near you, and you will work in my lumbermill until you come of age and get all that money. Is that a fair deal?” -Sir
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a captivating narrative regarding the moral ambiguities of science and the duplicity of human nature. Dr Jekyll is a benevolent, well-respected and brilliant scientist who meddles with the malevolent aspects of science, as he aims to discover and breed his depraved alter ego. He does this through transforming himself into Mr Hyde, a monstrous being who is unable to repent or accept responsibility for any of his heinous actions.
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The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells demonstrates the power to transform the human body using advances in scientific achievement. The novel itself is an enthralling and entertaining tale of terror and suspense, and it is a significant Faustian allegory of the dangerous capabilities of unregulated and unbridled scientific endeavours many decide to embark on. The Invisible Man is able to endure as one of the most notable stories in science fiction, in which Griffin, a brilliant and progidouous scientist uncovers the secret to achieving invisibility, but his grandiose ambitions and the power he unleashes causes him to spiral into intrigue, madness, and murder.
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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas features Starr Carter, an African American teenager who sees her childhood best friend, Khalil Harris, being shot and killed by a police officer after a routine traffic stop escalates into Khalil’s untimely demise. Starr is then forced to decide whether she will adhere to the unspoken laws of her local neighborhood and stay silent about the injustice she had witnessed, or testify in front of a grand jury and join an ongoing movement to end racist/xenophobic violence and police misconduct in communities across her area.
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1984 by George Orwell illustrates a dystopian society and political prophecy in which Big Brother is always listening in, and high-tech devices eavesdrop in people’s homes. 1984 takes place in a world of endless war, where fear and hate are used as weapons against foreigners. It is a world that has the government insisting that reality is not “something objective, external, existing in its own right” — but rather, “whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.”
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Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli is a renowned and critically acclaimed young adult novel which was published in August 2000. Like many of Spinelli’s other young adult novels, Stargirl deals with issues of conformity versus individuality, leaving the novel to resonate with various demographics from young adults to adult educators alike.
Leo Borlock is an eleventh grader who would like nothing more than to conform within his stereotypical high school environment. However, Leo and the rest of Mica high school become torn away from their conventional existence by the arrival of Stargirl Caraway, a defiant and eccentric student who has been homeschooled her entire life and is now attending high school for the first time. In the first half of the school year, Leo observes Stargirl’s abnormal actions and how his classmates react to her strange lifestyle. At first, the students are suspicious of Stargirl’s eccentric nature and are hesitant to socialize with her. As the story progresses, some of the students are influenced by Stargirl’s individuality and become more open-minded themselves.
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