Is there anyone here who knows Juvenile Science Fiction?

Is there anyone here who is familiar with Juvenile Science Fiction? I have three quite advanced readers in my grandchildren, boys aged 9 and 10, and a granddaughter, 13. The Heinlein and Asimov juveniles seem so political. That's not bad, but there is so much else to talk about. Is anyone willing and able to help? I will reread all of them before buying and giving them, of course, so no one has to feel responsible for the choices, if they don't want to. I was thinking Zenna Henderson The People and the Pern books for the older girl, but I don't know much about the younger fare--I didn't discover Science Fiction until I was 11 or 12, and then I read everything I could get my hands on. There's Daniel Pinkwater. What do you think of him for the boys?

I'm trying to remember my own age when I read books I'd call sci-fi (and I'm male, btw). I tried the Pern series when I was in fifth or sixth grade (about 9 yrs) and found it was too adult-oriented. But when I tried again a short while later (12 yrs) I thought they were great. I read Frank Herbert's Dune straight after that, and away I went. Some of the H.G. Wells stuff I liked too (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, etc.), I think maybe before Pern? Jules Verne was mostly too slow for me, despite finding his ideas fascinating.

fyi, for Pern I'd recommend Dragonsong and Dragonsinger before you point to Dragonflight, which is where the adult content starts kicking in. The F'lar-Lessa relationship is not that great a model.

Possibly you and I are getting too old to reliably know what kids these days are going to like. My own are into (non-genre) series I've never heard of that didn't exist those years ago, and with content that's much more reflective of their society today. Much as your (and mine) memories are treasured, maybe save those recommendations for later after you've hooked them so they can (hopefully) enjoy some genre history, so to speak. In the meantime speak with booksellers about their best sellers, or a librarian for what's popular now.

I read some Andre Norton when I was around 10. Moon of Three Rings was a favorite. Science Fiction was hard to come by in my little town (librarians called those books "devil worship" books and rarely bought any for the library). I also started reading ERB's John Carter of Mars books around then. Most of what was available would probably be considered "boy" fiction, but I didn't care. I would read anything. I read Dune for the first time at 12 and loved it. I read it again as an adult and got so much more out of it. I really liked Fritz Leiber's Fahfrd and Gray Mouser books when I was young. I didn't like them as much when I reread them as an adult, so maybe they appeal more to kids?

I read Ship Breaker before passing it on to my nephew who was 14 or so at the time. He and his friends were really into dystopian fiction then. They probably liked it more than I did. Like >2 Cecrow: said, this generation may be more into things us adults aren't really familiar with. And hopefully, librarians of today don't equate books with rockets or dragons on the cover as "devil worship" books.

I fear that the stuff we read as children in the dim and distant past will come across as awfully dated. You might be better off raiding these sorts of lists:
https://imaginationsoup.net/best-science-fiction-books-kids/
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/25-best-science-fiction-books-for-kids/
Though others may have their fingers closer to the pulse of the kidz...

Please, please, please.

Stop recommending stuff you fondly remember from when you were a kid. It's going to be super dated. Heinlein's juveniles are almost 70 years old. Dragonflight is fifty years old. If you aren't familiar with current - like within the past decade, or at the very least from this century - SF, then don't weigh in here. The OP is certainly capable of remembering the old stuff too.

Most of what I've read that's aimed at kids and young teens has been fantasy, rather than SF, but if they're open to that, Pinkwater's Neddiad (which barely meets my age criteria, at ten years old) is a lot of fun.

OP, I'm assuming that the reason you're talking about books for "the girl" and "the boys" is based on their age difference, rather than on some weird gendered-reading thing?

>5 lorax:, essentially what I concluded. And not only are the works themselves dated, but probably our impressions as well (the 'suck fairy' phenomenon).

Something fun from this century that occurred to me for the teen set (e.g. 13 would work) is Ready Player One.

Find a good indie bookstore and ask the YA specialist. There's a lot of good SF in the YA section these days. A chain (are there chains besides Barnes & Noble these days?) would be OK if there's not an indie near you.

Or of course the lists above.

Giving 20th Century SF to a young person will likely sour her or him on the genre entirely.

>6 Cecrow: Ready Player One does rely rather heavily on 80s nostalgia. Might still be enjoyable, but anyone born this century would miss a lot of the references.

>1 sallypursell: I'm curious about what you mean by "Too political", since I've never considered Heinlein or Asimov's juveniles particularly political, as SF goes. Any novel is going to espouse its writer's views, whether intentionally or not - they only tend to get clocked as "too political" when the author's views are different from the reader's.

I was actually going to recommend "Rocket Ship Galileo" if you wanted to share some older stuff with them; it's aged pretty well, especially compared to a lot of his others - unless you think "punching Nazis" is "too political", of course (...and some people do).

I would say Daniel Pinkwater tends to be extremely political, in that he tends to come in with thea specific agenda of teaching children to actually look at the world around them instead of trusting what they are told by authority figures - Alan Mendelsohn probably did more to shape my own political views than any other book I read at that age, just by teaching me how to see through BS, and how to be brave enough to be different.

And certainly there would also be plenty of people who think the dividing of things into "girl books" and "boy books" is too political all by itself!

Anyway, in terms of new stuff, this last five or ten years has not actually been a great time for space-adventures type books for young people - recently there's been a push toward fantasy (especially mythology and fairy-tale based) for the younger end, and Earthbound dystopias and paranormal stuff for the older ones.

For something that's newer but draws on old SF tropes for the 13-year-old, I suggest the Cinder series by Marissa Meyer. At 13 you could definitely get her started on less-adult adult SF, though (certainly the Pern series is very rarely recommended for young adults these days, given the large amount of rape and teenager/adult relationships shown uncritically in it.)

For the younger ones, The True Meaning of Smekday (which the movie Home was adapted from) is still great. Also, The Wild Robot is very good - no space, but plenty of robot1 There've also been some good SF graphic novels for that age - I highly recommend Catstronauts and Zita the Spacegirl depending on what they're into.

Check out the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld

In Lola's absence, I'm going to post a call-out for this group's own Lola Walser, who has run a series of threads entitled 'Reading the oldies - would you give this book to a child?' Taking on board lorax and Cecrow's comments above about datedness, if you find your kids getting a taste for the older, harder stuff (pre-1994) once you've started them on more recent YA materials, you might find the discussions in the thread useful: https://www.librarything.com/topic/306827

(Some of the comments may be helpful more generally.)

Hey, thanks for the call out, Robert, and obviously, it'd be great if Sally or anyone found the "oldies" threads useful in any way, but I gotta say I think she already got excellent advice here, much better than I personally can provide, and frankly, better than the oldies threads cumulatively have brought up--maybe I'm biased but it seems to me that if there is a "take away message" so far, it's "don't bother with this stuff--at least if you're under forty!" ;)

There is a bunch of good old stuff I'd still recommend to kids! (And I love reading your threads, though I always feel like i'm too late to comment.) But I think I would be more likely to recommend them to kids who were already interested in sf & fantasy and want to read the classics; you don't want to give the impression that SF is only for old people!

(And even if I was recommending classics, I'd probably start them on stuff like Young Wizards and Aliens Ate My Homework and This Place Has No Atmosphere and Growing Up Weightless and work backward to the Golden Age from there, not dive right into Heinlein and Blish and Asimov and McCaffrey.)

>13 melannen:

Pfftt, it's never too late to comment! Please feel free anytime.

I've actually no idea how one might go about interesting kids in sf, I have this vague notion that if they are exposed early enough to sciency-fictiony stuff (cartoons, movies, games?) they might discover a taste for it, but if they don't have it, they don't have it.

>14 LolaWalser: It's really a shame that there isn't more recent original science fiction being written for that age, but I work in a public library, and I can tell you that kids these days, in general, are 100% in favor of the Marvel SF universe (Guardians of the Galaxy, etc); anything Star Wars; Pokemon; and Splatoon. They all have tie-in chapter books, too (I've only read the Rocket and Groot ones, but they are very silly and very good.) And they still eat up the post-Rick Riordan mythological fantasy that's been all over YA. And they read all kinds of SF in graphic novels. I think there would be a market for junior grade SF books if they were being published, but I just don't seem them coming into the library.

In YA it's a little bit tougher because tbh I get the impression that the dystopias and vampires that have ruled for the past ten years or so are on their way Out, and we haven't quite figured out what is coming In yet instead, but there is still a lot of good YA fantasy of all sorts coming out.

One of my truisms during years of readers advisory was that the majority of good books are old. There are only a few really good ones in each decade or period, and they remain good. Meanwhile, only a few of the recent ones are really good, and will stay around. Most of what's recent will be forgotten soon.

A good young adult or children's librarian might be a good source. They can explore a little more about what the individuals' interests & tastes are, and then come up with good suggestions, new & old. So far, people on the list are making suggestions w/o knowing anything about the young people except their age. Not just their interests, but what level of reading they'd be comfortable with (some adult stuff? etc)

So I'm going to go ahead and defy recommendations by selecting books that I liked when I was younger. Many of the books are even older because I found them at the library.

As soon as I discovered him in fifth grade, I was a big fan of William Sleator. Particular favorites by him are House of Stairs and Singularity. I'd say best ages for him are maybe 11-14. He was probably my favorite "harder" sci-fi author when I was young, although his books are also very character-driven.

I also remember liking A Matter of Profit. Although the author is best known for YA fantasy, that book is leaning more science fiction. It doesn't focus on technology, but it looks at politics and economics in a sci-fi way.

I second Daniel Pinkwater for everyone! I liked his books even into middle school. Particular favorites were the Snarkout boys books. I also can't believe no one has mentioned Douglas Adams yet? Middle school is a great time to start reading him. If any of your grandchildren has a taste for the wacky, definitely send them this way.

I also remember reading lots space-opera type books in middle school that I found at the library. My main criterion was that there was a woman on the cover (who was wearing decent clothes). This seemed to work out fairly well for me, although I don't remember any particular titles.

>12 LolaWalser: Well, given that the OP framed the thread as a question, the immediate and obvious answer was "Lola!". And even given the sound advice to concentrate on stuff written during this century, the rigorous analysis you put your selected texts through is useful to understand for anyone looking for books for kids.

And hey, it taught me some things as well.

Its strange - I can ramble off a few newish Fantasy series for kids ... but not science fiction. So, I was curious - found a few a few websites:

https://best-sci-fi-books.com/25-best-science-fiction-books-for-kids/

and... I'm sorry to point this out - but Good Reads has a list that looks like it would fit your needs: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/science-fiction-middle-school

But, I'm wondering if fantasy is where it at for publisher these days - I didn't find a whole lot of resources. Anyway, good luck!

This is quite hard because a lot of stuff is probably better suited for 12-13 year olds. But off the top of my head the following should be OK.

Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall.
Larklight by Philip Reeve.

As a teenager I much enjoyed douglas hill but even that's hardly this century.

My friend has written a set of five novels (and a free novella) https://tallerbooks.com/ which is somewhat UK centric and aimed at teenagers, probably better suited for 13+ rather than 9. They're very good though!

Avians is the best YA I've read in the last couple of years, but again 13+ rather than 9.

Skye object 3270a is a YA novella set in a larger universe 14yr old protagonist.

>10 Darth-Heather: Seconding the Uglies series, for the 13 year old.

There's this, as well: Five science-fiction novels for older children from www.booktrust.org.uk
Mars Evacuees (mentioned in >20 andyl:) is one of the suggestions.

My 13-year-old daughter enjoyed Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century books. She really liked the Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation etc.), which is in a New Weird genre limbo between sf, horror, and espionage.

Really, I think 13 is plenty old enough to read books written for adults. I would recommend Desolation Road and its sequel Ares Express. The second of these even has a YA protagonist (and can be read independently of the first).

>22 Dilara86:

The https://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk website is quite useful as it has reviews from actual kids at different ages for a lot of books.

>23 paradoxosalpha:

Oh I forgot about the 13 year old.

Other ideas would be Planesrunner by Ian McDonald. Or one of Ann Halam's books such as Siberia, or more Westerfield such as Leviathan or Lost on Mars the first of the Lora series by Paul Magrs.

Margaret Peterson Haddix is a current writer with roughly 40 books in print. I'd guess that about half of them are YA SF of SFish.

>19 TheDivineOomba: Mars Evacuees and Me And Marvin Gardens (also on that list) are ones I haven't read but have heard good things about!

That first list has a lot of good stuff on it, but it's mostly older (good older, though!)

The Goodreads list has a lot of good newer stuff, but most of what I recognize is either comics (good comics!) or dystopias. Nothing against dystopias either! Divergent and Hunger Games really are both good reads, and I know young people who adore Marie Lu. YA dystopias are sort of their own genre, distinct from other SF, at this point though.

>20 andyl: I think there's a sequel to Mars Evacuees as well.

>24 andyl: Ooh thanks, it looks like a great place for children who like books and for the adults in their lives! Very comprehensive and fun.

Wow! Thank you all so much. Originally, "political" meant, to me, that it was specifically concerned with politics--with political governance. Either there was an abusive government or a rebellion going on, with kids getting mixed up in it, or protagonists involved.

I'm afraid I was being a little dated with "girl" and "boy" literature, but I do really think interests diverge somewhat. Not that I think either shouldn't read or like all books, but that comfortable or enticing books might not be exactly equivalent. I read everything, and I love "hard" SF, and always have, but there are some books I would like that my brothers would never read at all. Anything primarily about relationships is of less interest to boys than girls. That's my husband's opinion, primarily, but I see the point. I will check out the foregoing, and try to still my enthusiasm for the things I liked in my childhood.

Oh, one thing I gave that the 10 year old liked was Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander. One again, that was more fantasy than SF.

If you have any more thoughts they would be very welcome, of course!

At 13 and 14, I was hooked on Star Wars novels and the adult science fiction by Orson Scott Card. I'm hopeful my daughter will skip that phase and read not-franchised novels by newer authors. The Young Adult selection has become decently wide.

She's still a ways off, anyway. I'm going to focus here at the science fiction for nine- through eleven-year-olds.

Picked from the Goodreads list linked above:

Mech Cadet Yu by Greg Pak
Rust: The Boy Soldier by Royden Lepp
Sanity & Tallulah by Molly Brooks
The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away by Ronald L. Smith
The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patelby Sheela Chari

From a search in my public library's catalog:

Max Einstein by James Patterson
Frank Einstein by Jon Scietszka
Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
The Summer Experiment by Cathie Pelletier

Several years of Cybils Awards Finalists:

Cog by Greg van Eekhout
The Countdown Conspiracy by Katie Slivensky
The Firefly Code by Megan Frazer Blakemore
Last Day on Mars (Chronicle of the Dark Star) by Kevin Emerson
Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall
We're Not from Here by Geoff Rodkey

Wow, thanks. I truly appreciate your trouble.

I suppose H.G. Wells is out, then?

>30 aspirit: The City of Ember is a good one and, I think, the first in a trilogy. There was a film made, too.

Its hard to relate to kids of this age but here are a few of the easier books in my collection. Certainly they're easier to read (and much more enjoyable stories) than Asimov or Heinlein.

I'd like to second Ready Player One however I agree that it relies heavy on eighties nostalgia. Ernest Cline's second book Armada might be more suitable. It's like a modern Enders game I guess (haven't read that one but it's a similar theme).

Jay Kristoff's Lifel1k3 trilogy might also be a nice introduction. Although I think Kristoff mostly writes fantasy Lifel1k3 is science fiction. It's an easy to read and quite enjoyable story although its heavy in mixing work from other authors. If you've watched and read a lot of science fiction there's a lot to recognize, if you haven't yet there's a lot to explore.

>33 rork: I would agree, it is really difficult to judge what will be enjoyable for younger folks these days, if they've been exposed to a lot of action TV or movies. I'd say books from authors like Andre Norton or Orson Scott Card are very age appropriate, but if they are expecting a lot of action or character conflict of other types, they'll be a little slow for them. Asimov is also generally appropriate, the Robot novels may be more interesting.

Oh, I forgot (partly because I was equating sci-fi with outer space); I just read Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley.

It was published in 2007 and set in contemporary times, supposedly narrated by a teenage boy who finds an elusive dragon. The dragons are endangered and live in a US national park; the park has an institute (where Jake lives) which tries to protect the dragons (even though they haven't actually seen one up close) while their fate is debated between those who want to protect dragons and those who want to exploit them/ the land.

The Scavengers by Michael Perry was an incredibly fun book to read and is exactly what the OP is looking for. I tried to pass it on to my 11 year old niece but she was stuck on books about princesses at the time.

Here's the blurb:
When the world started to fall apart, the government gave everyone two choices: move into the Bubble Cities . . . or take their chances outside. Maggie's family chose to live in the world that was left behind. Deciding it's time to grow up and grow tough, Maggie rechristens herself "Ford Falcon" - a name inspired by the beat-up car she finds at a nearby junkyard. The same junkyard where Ford's family goes to scavenge for things they can use and barter with the other people who live OutBubble. Her family has been able to survive this brave new world by working together. But when Ford comes home one day to discover her home ransacked and her family missing, she must find the strength to rescue her loved ones with the help of some friends.
The Scavengers is a wholly original tween novel that combines an action-packed adventure, a heartfelt family story, and a triumphant journey of self-discovery. It achieves the perfect balance of humor and heart in a world where one person's junk is another person's key to survival.

Hope this helps start the young one's reading for a lifetime.