Little Brother

Cory Doctorow's Little Brother is a modern-day 1984 where Winston wins. It's a pretty simplistic book and obviously aimed at 14-20 year olds with the language and several gratuitous makeout scenes (2 ending in premarital relations). If the author could have stuck to the point it would have been a better book. It's about losing our rights in a society where government keeps telling people that the protection of life is more important than protecting liberty or the pursuit of happiness. It's got some really neat information on protecting yourself from intrusive government monitoring, but it's not worth bothering with. I had a professor who once said that even though there is plenty of good food that gets thrown away, we don't have to go to the garbage to eat well. I would not let kids read this.

The Graveyard Book

I first read Neil Gaiman's work in high school when he had a comic called Sandman so I was already predisposed to liking him. However, I believe I would have really liked The Graveyard Book anyway. It's really a modern telling of Kipling's The Jungle Book and he readily admits it in his acknowledgments. It's a story of a boy whose family gets murdered in the first pages of the book and as a toddler he escapes to the nearby graveyard by chance. He is taken in by the local ghosts and the mysterious caretaker of the graveyard. The rest of the story is his growing up and learning about his family's murder. The ghosts want to keep him safe in the graveyard; he wants to explore the outside world and avenge his family.

I really enjoyed the book. The beginning is a little tense. The murders aren't described but it is obvious what happened. It's a great coming-of-age story and a fun read. There is no foul language that I can recall. It's one the tweens and older would enjoy.