I plan to do that. In fact, I'm planning to do overviews of each of the SFWA Grandmasters as a way of providing roadmaps to their works. Unfortunately, there are nearly 40 SF authors who've received that award, so it's probably going to take me a few years to get to them all. I don't have Silverberg slated for the coming year, but he might be a good choice for 2024. Thanks for the suggestion!
My teenage entry to the genre or speculative fiction in general was the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Most of those are a mix of soft scifi, fantasy, and mystery/adventure but they still inspired me. You bet your butt I was walking out of every scholastic book fair with at least one arm full. And occasionally on long winter nights, my Dad and I would listen to War of the Worlds. Still holds up beautifully
I still look back fondly on the afternoons and evenings after getting some Choose Your Own Adventure books from the library. The Cave of Time and Space and Beyond in particular stuck with me.
I was a little too old when the CYOA series began, but my younger brother really enjoyed them. I remember reading a couple of his copies out of curiosity and finding them quite fun and creative, but also too short (I wanted more story depth by that point in my life). When you listened to War of the Worlds, was it the original book or the 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation? Both are excellent, although Welles takes more than a few liberties with the story.
@@thelibraryladder Well that was N years ago...but I believe it was the radio drama version. And I agree, because of their structure CYOA books had shorter stories. I would be interested to see a modern take on them with a little more heft. Although now I think that literary type narrative game market is filled with ttrpgs and the like
I love seeing this side of science fiction- without you I wouldn't get this exposure. As always quality. And its rather abnormal but your video inspires me to want to write science fiction books for kids! Thank you Bridger.
Thanks, Whitney! I too have been tempted to try my hand at writing a science fiction story for kids. There's a void in the genre for young readers in recent decades. But then I run into the brick wall of trying to come up with a compelling story idea. :)
As you might remember I have been reading some science fiction with my ten year old son and happened across this video which is exactly what I was looking for to find something for us to read together. I think it is super cool that you have thought about writing some children's science fiction. I am myself trying to put on to paper an idea I have for a book. Not so much geared towards kids but that kids would and could enjoy. If you ever do write anything, I will definitely buy it. Have you ever written anything before?
I struggled a lot with reading as a youngster. It was Robert Silverberg's Time of the Great Freeze that finally got me over the hump. It'll always have a special place in my heart because of that. I loved H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, though I think I've always been partial to The Time Machine. That might have as much to do with my first experience, hearing UK actor Robert Hardy's abridged audio book my brother had on cassette, as it did with The Time Machine's quality. Though I do love the book. The Tripods books were great. I think I got a boxed set of the four of them right around the time the prequel came out and devoured the series. They're sort of borderline, I suppose, between Science Fiction and Fantasy, but I really like a lot of Philip Reeve's novels. He has a set of young reader aimed books starting with Larklight, that captures a sort of Victorian adventure vibe. His more middle-grade/teen aimed series Mortal Engines was a ton of fun. I wish the film adaptation had managed to capture absolutely any of the books' charm. I don't expect a film to be a perfect vision of a novel. But I do expect some of the heart of one to make it to the other, and that didn't happen. I've only read the first book in Railhead series, which is very Space Opera. I liked it, but I got sidetracked before the second book came out and never got around to finishing the trilogy.
Thanks for sharing! I had a similar reaction to the film adaptation of Reeves' Mortal Engines. The books are far superior. I haven't read the other two Reeves series you mentioned. Alas, I don't read as many children's books as I used to, now that my kids have gotten older.
TLL, this appeared on my daily YT feed today, I had not seen it before. I have a precocious 7yr-old grandson who is an advanced reader and I've been itching to get him acquainted with juvenile SF but had no idea where to look or start (web searches are notoriously vague and misleading I've found). So when I saw this it encouraged me greatly. Thanks so much for your perspective and your reviews and suggestions. Yet another bonus one enjoys being a subscriber to your excellent YT channel! Cheers.
Thanks, Rick! Depending on how advanced a reader your grandson is, I think John Christopher's Tripods trilogy is a great place to start. It was written for kids age 10-13.
Robert Heinlein's "Between Planets", Robert Sheckley's "Status Civilization", Andre Norton's "The Time Traders", Harry Harrison's "The Stainless Steel Rat" were among the first sf books I read. :)
Excellent list! I didn't discover Sheckley until I was well into adulthood, and I wish I'd read him sooner. His sense of humor is a lot of fun. I binge read every book by Norton I could find as a kid.
I read and enjoyed Rendezvous this summer. The Dune director apparently is making it into a film so I figured I should read the books beforehand. How did you like the sequels? I should probably start the 2nd book sometime soon.
I've been looking forward to a Rama film adaptation for decades. At one point, around twenty years ago, Morgan Freeman and David Fincher were working on a film version, but they couldn't come up with a filmable script. The book sequels diminish in quality with each successive book. Rama II is the best of the sequels and, while it didn't live up to my hopes, it wasn't bad.
I started reading SF in seventh grade. My first exposure was when I was intrigued by an Andre Norton cover and checked it out from my school's library. I devoured everything I could get of her's. This was before the internet and I studiously kept a list of her novels, I never found them all and the list was lost but the fond memories are not..
Thanks for sharing that story! I started binge reading Andre Norton when I was around 9 or 10 after discovering her books Steel Magic and The Stars Are Ours in my school library. I'm particularly fond of her early books. I plan to do an overview of her works at some point in the next couple of years as part of a series of videos focused on the SFWA Grandmasters (Norton was the first woman to receive that honor).
My baby cousin is the sister I always wanted and when I run out of mythology books to gift her, you will be the reason I'm able to spoil her continuously
3:41 great clip from a GREAT movie (yes I said that) When it came to sci Fi, there wasn't a lot that teachers or parents could really recommend to us kids in the UK back in the 90's. I'm not sure if it was frowned upon, but i think books were more focused on period fairy tales or modern silly circumstances and easier to read as opposed to looking to the future or as Ray would say "the possible" type stories. If any that does stand out that we did look at back then was Ted Hughes 'The iron Man' which certainly felt quite exciting and different to read actually. There's a great illustrated edition of that book done by Laura Carlin a few years ago and is done very creatively and yet simple as well. Get it if you can :) Great, Johnathan Cristopher I'll definitely check !! Thanks again :)
That Universal Studios intro made an impression on me when I first saw Waterworld in a movie theater almost 30 years ago. I thought the film was entertaining, and Kevin Costner's catamaran was very inventive. The story didn't seem to break new ground, though, because it was essentially a watery remake of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Science fiction for young readers has been struggling as a subgenre for a while. Starting in sixth grade through high school, the only SF books my kids have been given the opportunity to read by their teachers are Lois Lowry's 'The Giver,' Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451,' and William Gibson's 'Neuromancer,' all of which are dystopian fiction, which seems to have taken over YA SF. The Iron Man is truly a classic. I don't have the edition illustrated by Carlin. I'll have to check it out. Thanks for suggestion!
Thanks, Penny! For someone who regularly reads fantasy novels (which you do if I'm not mistaken), the Tripods trilogy is a great place to start. At it's heart, it's really an adventure story that has science fiction elements in it.
Just checked out this video after our chat on Discord. This is a great resource. My kid is only 4 so we're solidly in the "Peppa Pig" phase but I hope to start nudging him into science fiction
Thanks! Children's books were the original reason I started my channel. I was frustrated with the quality of many of the books published in recent years targeting 8-to-12-year-olds, which is the age when most lifelong readers develop their love of reading. The relative lack of good science fiction for kids was one of my big concerns. I've since branched into other genres with my videos, but I try to make kid-focused videos periodically for parents who might like suggestions. This is just the first in what I intend to be an ongoing series of videos recommending classics for kids.
I read the Tom Swift Jr. books in the 60s, around the same time I was reading Heinlein's and Andre Norton's children's books. I used to ride my bike several miles to the local library to borrow them. I've got a complete set of the Heinlein juveniles and several of Nortons children's book now, and I reread them every few years. War of the Worlds was one of the first SF books I ever read, because my father had a copy in his library (along with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, another one of my earliest SF books). I've got both of my fathers books in my own library, now. I first read the Tripod Trilogy while I was in Jr. High School (13-14 years old) after finding it in the school library. It's been years so I should reread the series, now. Surprisingly, given how many of Clarke's books I read when I was younger, I only read Redevous With Rama a couple years ago! It's definitely a great book.
Thanks for watching and sharing your childhood reading experience! Reading the Tom Swift Jr. books alongside Heinlein's juveniles was a little jarring for me as a kid. I enjoyed both sets of books, but only Heinlein's really took the science seriously. The Swift books were a lot of fun, but my analytical self couldn't avoid picking apart the questionable science underlying some of his inventions such as the polar-ray dynasphere, the triphibian atomicar, and the electronic retroscope. I plan to feature the Tom Swift Jr., Heinlein and Norton books in future videos.
this is a really great list. i actually just finished Rama Revealed a few weeks ago. i was very surprised about the “reveal,” i didn’t expect it to go in that direction at all. but it was very thought provoking all the same. i think that the john carter of mars series would fit snugly on a list like this! i would have been utterly in love with john carter and dejah thoris when i was still in grade school. i haven’t read the tripod trilogy, or heard of it for that matter, but i’m looking forward to enjoying it in the future :)
Thanks! I completely agree about the Barsoom books. I read them multiple times as a kid, teenager and adult. The last time I read them was about five years ago. I'm also planning a video retrospective on Burroughs later this year.
I just today tracked down Lost Race Of Mars, with very little to go on, except that there were two kids and a crude drawing of them on a reddish cover, and that it was out by about the end of 1963 when I read it. I'm pleased to see that the book and author are well regarded, and that as of this comment, Silverberg is still alive.
I'd heard a rebroadcast of the 1938 (?) "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast when I was about nine so I got that book for my birthday and then for Christmas I got the combined "The Time Machine" and "The Invisible Man." (Both books in an omnibus volume with a couple of nice articles about time and invisibility written for younger readers published by "Children's Press.") I'd recommend either of the stories for younger readers. Thanks for these videos!
I enjoy your channel because you take the time to evaluate whatever you're reviewing. Thank you again, this is very well done and I'm full of suggestions. If you can find the time I'd like to see here the same thing you did with Guy Gavriel Kay's work only with science fiction. This would be a huge undertaking if you ask me so I'm cool with waiting on this. Some of the other Science Fiction Alliance folks came close but your way of explaining the literature is erudite and I'd take your advice as to where to start with let's say some of the Golden Age or what most may consider "Classics". Thanks again !!
Thanks for the suggestion! I'm planning to do deep dives into the history and roots of the science fiction and fantasy genres in the coming year, including launching a series of overview videos about each of the SFWA Grandmasters. Nearly 40 authors have received that honor, so it's likely to take me a few years to cover them all. The format will be similar to what I did with GGK.
I agree with what you said about Heinlein's Juvenile stories. I have been plucking away at his bibliography for 30 years. I have 3 juvenile stories left. Silverberg was so prolific, it would be awesome just to meet him. One of the great gtrandmasters that is still living.
I imagine Silverberg would be a great person to have as a dinner guest. The conversation would be fascinating, given his central role working closely with other SF authors to popularize science fiction and help it achieve mainstream literary credibility in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
I loved reading the Tripods trilogy when I was younger. In the UK it was dramatised for TV but as far as I can remember, only the first two books made it to the sceen and of course it was not as good as the written word. I always remember a feeling of dread and anticipation when I was reading it and in the second book, I could barely breathe! I wonder if I could ask any of the people commenting here, if they remember a story (I think it was a short story in a book with other short stories, possibly written by Asimov or Clarke)? It was about two children that were grown in a lab. They were studied by scientists and woken up for only a day or so every few years. Their ages were advanced artificially until they were adults. They were given false memories so they thought they were living full lives. It was so poignant that I have never forgotten it.
I've only seen a few snippets of that UK TV production and I was underwhelmed by the acting and production values. I've always wanted to see the trilogy get a big-budget film or HBO series treatment. The short story you described sounds familiar, but I can't place it. (I've read thousands of SF short stories over the years, and many of them blend together in my memory.) Stylistically and thematically, it sounds like it might be Clarke, but Bradbury or Silverberg could be prime candidates as well. I'm planning a series of videos in the coming year on classic SF short collections and anthologies, so I'll keep my eye out for it. Thanks for sharing!
So i took a couple of recommendations from this video and purchased two here is my takeway: Conquerors from the darkness by robert silverberg is a great short scifi novel. A young man goes from zero to hero in short amount of tome but the series of events flow very well and the story also has two major unexpected turns. I homeschool five children and my two readers are very advanced. I would say that book is certain good for a 9 year old, really an exciting story. Rendezvous with rama was seriously awe inspiring and mind bending. It leaves many of my questions unanswered but such is the genre. I would recommend to a mature reader (certainly wouldn’t consider giving it to my 9 year old)due to the sexual explanations that are i think irrelevant to the story really. But super fun read, really catapults you into that cylinder.
Thanks for sharing! I agree that Rendezvous with Rama is best for mature kids. The sexual content is very brief and not lurid or central to the story. When I read the book as a kid, that content didn't even register with me. It wasn't until I re-read it as an adult that I noticed it.
I read Rendezvous with Rama in 7th grade because I thought the cover looked cool and it definitely turned me onto reading for fun instead of just for school.
I think that's a perfect age for reading Clarke's Rama. The book's short enough to not feel intimidating or too time-consuming, while the story is advanced enough to feel like a book for grown-ups at a time when many young readers are looking to graduate to books written for older readers.
I loved John Christopher - as well as the Tripods, there was his Sword of the Spirits trilogy I was particularly fond of. However, what occupied me for a long time was the many dozens of Andre Norton books in my local library. I'm pretty sure I read them all. I recall the Solar Queen series, Breed to Come, and The Zero Stone with some fondness, though I haven't reread them as an adult. I also liked several books by the author John Wyndham, and his post-apocalyptic story The Chrysalids in particular. If you know this book, I now live in "Sealand" for real.
Great comment! I too loved reading Norton and Wyndham when I was a kid, and I plan to feature them in my next set of SF recommendations for younger readers.
I wish I had tried a good Sci-Fi book when I was young - I remember seeing the Tripod Series in my school library, and finding those Hildebrandt covers tantalizing (which I'm now trying collect 2nd hand), I don't know if I was reading Goosebumps or Dragonlance at the time, but I was firmly in the Fantasy camp, and so I remain today without much Sci-Fi behind me (save in movies). I did enjoy the Giver, and a few Michael Crichton, but they didn't offer me a fantastical future or "off world" set dressing - the only one like that I tried was Orson Scott Card's five book "The Ships of Earth", which bored me altogether some way through book three. I wonder if I'd tried Ender's Game (which never crossed my path) or John Christopher instead, I might have read H.G.Welles and then who knows what doors that could have led to, what whole alternate reading history.
It's unfortunate that you didn't encounter good SF when you were young. I'm grateful that I was exposed to both SF and fantasy around the same time as a kid, so I developed an early love of both. The good news is that you still have a lifetime ahead of you to make up for lost ground. The other channels in the recently created SF Alliance (linked in my video description) can provide a more exhaustive menu of reading suggestions because (a) they make more videos than I do and (b) they focus more heavily on SF than I do. P.S. Card's Homecoming Saga (which includes The Ships of Earth) might be the worst books he's written. I DNF'ed the series about halfway through the second book, so you made it farther than I did.
@@thelibraryladder Glad to hear I'm not the only one to DNF Homecoming - it's a shame, I kind of liked the first book, save for that it convinced me it was going somewhere. I've been watching booktube channels like Media Death Cult for a while, I've already got many probably great SF prospects at hand, I just need to devote my eyeballs to them over my other genres. I've already had a fantastic time reading "Dune" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", and I think I can depend of Dick and Herbert in the future.
I was tempted to mention Burroughs' Barsoom series at the beginning of this video, because of the influence it had on the 'planetary romance' segment of the SF genre. Ultimately, I vetoed the idea because (a) the books have more in common with sword and sorcery fantasy than they do with science fiction, and (b) they weren't written specifically for kids (although I binge read them multiple times when I was about 11). The books are dated, formulaic and written with a breathless, pulpy style, but I still find them to be very fun reads despite their flaws. The first three books in the Barsoom series are essentially one long novel (so keep reading after A Princess of Mars--the next two books get better), while the rest are a series of standalones. I'm planning an overview of Burroughs sometime early next year.
@@thelibraryladder I'm very much looking forward to that Burroughs overview. Also worth mentioning that I've just finished the first Thomas Covenant trilogy and been reading through Moorcocks eternal champion sequence as per your recommendations. Your taste continues to impress
Great! I suggest: do a video on Andre Norton. My favorites include THE ZERO STONE and sequel UNCHARTED STARS; also, STORM OVER WARLOCK, and THE TIME TRADERS.
Norton is on my list of authors I plan to cover. I read her extensively as a kid. The Stars Are Ours, The Moon of Three Rings, and The Zero Stone were three of my favorites.
@@thelibraryladder Those are great, but I swear by STORM OVER WARLOCK (which is not a Nazi book in spite of its title). I also love her fantasy book STEEL MAGIC (aka GREY MAGIC).
I remember very well the first science fiction book I read: I was in Junior High (before Middle Schools) in the 8th grade. In the school library I found a copy of When Worlds Collide. That hooked me on sci-fi.
I saw the 1951 film adaptation of When Worlds Collide on TV when I was around the same age as you were, and it prompted me to seek out the original novel.
Also a great place for kids to get into reading is the comic(graphic novel). Maybe not for some kids but I loved them and still do lol is the 2000 AD comics.
Personally, I've been underwhelmed by most of the graphic novels I've read (most of which were written for kids). However, I'm all in favor of books that get kids to read more. Thanks!
Great video. One book I'm curious about is City by Clifford Simak. My son likes science fiction and he loves dogs so this would seem to be a perfect book for him. Is it kid appropriate? My son is 10. I'm not real picky about what he reads but I just hate for him to see the F bomb and sex stuff at his age.
Thanks for your question. It's been a few years since I last read it, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing age-inappropriate in City along the lines you mentioned. Ten might be slightly young for the book, though, simply because of the book's structure and the philosophical themes in it. Structurally, it's a collection of loosely connected short stories spanning millennia, so there isn't much of an overarching plot that runs through it, and some of the stories are much better than others. Thematically, it's kind of downer of a book, describing the future fate of humanity as going out with a whimper rather than a bang. I don't think I would have enjoyed it much as a ten year old, but it probably would have resonated with me more by the time I was 12 or 13. (I first read it as an adult when I was in my 20s.)
@@thelibraryladder thank you so much for taking the time to give me such a detailed overview and thank you for delving into the kid appropriate science fiction books for us parents who want to share the reading experience with them.
My opening SF as a kid was The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Cameron (and all its sequels). I also loved The Spaceship under the Apple Tree trilogy by Louis Slobodkin. The Tripods trilogy by John Christopher was also a great love.
I first discovered The White Mountains via Boy's Life when it was serialized. I then read the books a few times after that. I re-read it a few years ago via audio, and, surprisingly, holds up well.
I never thought of Rendezvous with Rama as a entry book for kids, but, yeah, it would work. I must have read it as a late teen or young adult, but I have read it a couple times since then. Still a favorite of mine, and a sub-genre of SF I miss (just exploring foreign worlds. Alan Dean Foster does this very well).
Yeah, I think Rendezvous can work for an advanced/mature middle grade reader, but it's probably best-suited as an entry point for slightly older readers.
"Cheyennes 6112" (William Camus & Christian Grenier, 1974?). My first sci-fi read, way before I was aware that term was even a thing. It imprinted indelebly in my 8-year-old brain. I loved this book with a passion. (It didn't hold up in an adult re-read, but boy did I fall in love with sci-fi after that. And ecology, and horses, and First Nations/Native Americans..).
That's great! I hadn't heard of that book until now. According to Goodreads, it seems it was only published in French and Spanish language editions. I wish more non-English language SF&F books were translated into English. My French comprehension is very rusty these days. Thanks for sharing!
I’m 43 years old and I re-read the Tripods trilogy at least every couple of years because it is bloody excellent. John Christopher is the king of worldwide disaster SF with his adult works. Also, his YA Sword In Waiting trilogy is well worth a read too 😁
I agree. I think the Tripods trilogy holds up very well for both younger and older readers of today. I've also enjoyed his disaster fiction including Empty World, The White Voyage, and, particularly, The Death of Grass (US title: No Blade of Grass), which shocked me with its plausibility when I first read it. Thanks for watching and commenting!
I had the Tom Swift and the Mike Mars adventures . Later i read some Heinlein ' Tunnel InThe Sky'. At thirteen i found Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama ' a bit ' dry ' 😉 . Christopher's ' The Lotus Caves ' is a fine read .And if buying the Wells or any kids book , please avoid the 'abridge ' v...sions. Very good list .
Thanks! I plan to feature the Tom Swift (Sr. & Jr.), Mike Mars and Tom Corbett chapter book series in future videos. I've never read The Lotus Caves. I'll have to track down a copy.
I've made a sort of project in the last few years of seeking out modern middle grade science fiction - there are some great books out there but they often don't get the same level of promotion as middle grade fantasy. In my opinion the two best MG SF authors writing today are Christopher Edge and Alastair Chisholm - with my personal favourite book being The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day by Edge. They are both British authors though so I don't know whether or not they have been published in other countries.
Thanks for the suggestions! I haven't encountered either Edge or Chisholm before, and their middle grade SF books look very intriguing. They're both available here in the US, but as you noted, they don't seem to have received much marketing support. I now plan to check them out.
Oh my goodness, I hadn't thought about the Tripod trilogy since I read them in 1978 or 79. They were recommended to me by my 5th grade teacher, a woman whose name I have sadly forgotten and yet she had a profound influence on my life. She knew that I loved science fiction and recommended several series of books for me to read. Probably all book lovers have someone like that in their history. When I was very young (probably 6 or 7) I read a series of adventure novels about people living in the world's ocean. I no longer remember the title or author, only fragmented pieces. I remember that they wore suits that allowed them to breathe water; the author described them as having tiny hairs that passed the oxygen along to the wearer. One character had lost an arm, and had an arm of a different ethnicity grafted in its place. They also had conflicts with walruses. If anyone knows anything about these books, I'd love to revisit them.
Hmmm...the only undersea stories for children from pre-1975 that come to mind are the Undersea trilogy by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson (Undersea Quest, Undersea Fleet, and Undersea City) and Attack from Atlantis, by Lester del Rey, but I don't remember the specific plot points you mentioned being in them. (It's been a very long time since I read them.)
@@thelibraryladder Thank you for that! I spent an hour going down an underwater science fiction rabbit whole, using Bing's chatbot to search for the stories. While I did not locate them, I did learn that characters with one arm that is a different color appear much more often then I thought, in that they appear in at least 2 series that have nothing to do with the series I'm trying to discover. I may read Undersea Quest anyway; I have always enjoyed Pohl's stories, and I don't mind reading stories intended for a younger audience.
I was a big fans of the BBC Tripods mini series. I only recently found out that it was based on a book series. I read Rendezvous with Rama earlier this year and it was excellent
I've been hoping for a big-budget film (or HBO/Netflix/Disney) adaptation of the Tripods trilogy for a long time. Now that VFX has gotten relatively easy to produce, I think it might happen in the next ten years if the film rights can be sorted out. Thanks for watching!
Sorry for the spam; my train of thought is all over the place this morning. I don't know if this was part of your literary history, but in the mid-1970's the Doc Savage books, or at least some of them, were reprinted to coincide with the release of the (terrible) film Doc Savage - Man of Bronze. I got into those stories in a big way, and they gave me a lifelong love of pulp adventure stories. I don't know if I could recommend them to modern kids, but I found them enthralling. Of course, I didn't pay attention to problematic elements like Doc operating on criminals to remove the part of their brains that made them evil, or the guns that only knocked people unconscious. If you were ever also into pulp stories, I would love to watch you do a video on that some day.
Great suggestion! I read the Man of Bronze books as a kid back in the late 70s, and I have about a dozen or so of the books. They're fun, pulpy reads, although Doc wouldn't be considered a role model anymore, given today's ethical and cultural sensibilities. Ron Ely was a much better Tarzan than Doc Savage. At some point, I intend to feature Doc in a video along with other pulp superheroes such as The Shadow, The Black Bat and The Spider. I have a lot of other videos ahead of it on my list, though.
I'd like to add one more to your young readers' SF recommendations: _The Forgotten Door_ by Alexander Key. He's best known for _Escape to Witch Mountain,_ and there are some similarities between the two, but I prefer the former title. A young boy falls through a disused space portal and lands on Earth with no memory of his origins. He is found and befriended by a local family, and as bits and pieces of his memory come back, he discovers that he has psychic powers - telepathy and a limited form of levitation - and a remarkable skill at carving. Later, the family has to protect him from a whole slew of misguided people and bad guys. It's not a long book, but I sure have enjoyed it since I first encountered it in our third-grade classroom library (every grade had one, which was separate from the main school library we all went to once a week). (Don't worry - I bought my own copy at a thrift store. I would no more steal a book than I would eat an amanita.)
Terrific suggestion! I'm very familiar with The Forgotten Door (I have a copy of it on a shelf about 20 feet from me). Like you, I prefer it over his Witch Mountain books, and I devoured them all when I was in elementary school. The Forgotten Door is on my list of children's books I plan to include in future videos of this type.
Have you read any Chris Wooding novels? I adore them for the way they take middle readers seriously while also catering to them. In particular Poison and The Fade are amazing fantasy novels short on exposition about their worlds making them fast paced despite having to introduce you to a new world. His book Storm thief is also a blend of steam punk and more traditional fantasy tropes but is held back by deeper exposition that approaches preachiness in describing “democracy” but its ease of access allowed me to read it in the 4th grade alongside books like The Hatchet, watership down, where the red fern grows, the hobbit, and then the lord of the rings in 5th grade. Woodings books were my introduction to many things not just post-Tolkien fantasy because my mother read Poison to us when I was in 3rd grade. He’s imaginative and excellent at giving enough explanation of the setting to hook but still keep you inventing extra lore.
You were reading some great ones at an early age. I tried reading Watership Down in elementary school, but it didn't connect with me at the time. However, when I gave it another try as an adult ten years later, it became one of my all-time favorite books.
@@thelibraryladder it’s my favorite book of all time, the beginning of chapter 4 in particular is the most beautiful and satisfying piece of prose ever written.
I loved sf/fantasy as a kid in the 70s and 80s, but I will admit it was harder to find for kids then. I didn't find Heinlein till an adult (and frankly, I only have enjoyed his juvies). I wish I had found Tom Swift. I found Oz books and Tarzan, but missed the Venus and Mars ones. Kids today have such a dearth of choice. I remember going to the libraries and finding books I felt were more for girls easily (I know I should have just read them now). But I saw Blume and Clear y all over the place, but fiction, just for boys (or what seemed targeted to boys) was rare. I only found The Hardy Boys and found those harder to read for some reason.
I remember exactly what you're describing. My elementary school library had very little SF for kids (although it's where I first encountered Rendezvous with Rama). Mystery stories, historical fiction, modern (realistic) fiction and fantastical stories tended to populate the shelves. The few SF titles it had (such as the Barsoom, Tom Swift Jr., Mushroom Planet and Matthew Looney series) tended to lean heavily on fantastical elements rather than science.
I forgot to say that I am 100% with you on Heinlein's best books being his juvenile stories. Podkayne of Mars, The Red Planet, Methuselah's Children, Have Space Suite Will Travel, Citizen of the Galaxy, Starship Troopers... Heinlein is criticized for the political viewpoints of some of his stories, but those same viewpoints are wildly different between the various tales. Compare, for instance, Citizen of the Galaxy and Starship Troopers. I don't think that they were intended to proselytize to young readers, but I've never researched the subject. Of course, it helped that those stories were easily found in the public and school libraries of my youth. I also enjoyed Asimov's Lucky Star books. They are particularly fascinating because they are supposed to be relatively hard science fiction, but the science in them is laughably out of date. Remember when Venus was a water world in every science fiction story set on, or near, Venus?
Don't forget Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and though not as good, Dig Allen Space Explorer. For me my journey started with Tom Swift Jr in 5th grade. (a late bloomer in reading) The old Tom Swift books followed - upstate NY in 1910 was as alien as any alien planet. Silverberg's Revolt on Alpha C, with Clarke's The Sands of Mars as my first adult SF, and the usual suspects, Heinlein, Norton, etc.
You had a great introduction to SF. I plan to feature the Tom Corbett, Tom Swift (Sr. & Jr.), and Mike Mars SF series in future videos, as well as the Heinlein and Norton juveniles. Thanks for sharing!
A few more obscure sci-fi books for young readers: A BILLION FOR BORIS by Mary Rodgers (author of the book FREAKY FRIDAY), STRANGER FROM THE DEPTHS by Gerry Turner, and (this one isn’t obscure, but most people don’t think of it as a kids’ book) FLATLAND by Edwin Abbot
@@thelibraryladder Good luck. Not easy to find. I'm still trying to get a copy of the unabridged version. The story is about kids who love scuba diving and find an underwater cave with an intelligent pre-historic fish-man in it, in suspended animation.
A modern scifi young adult trilogy I really enjoyed is called the Chronicles of the Dark Star. The first book is called "The Last Day on Mars." A group of teens has to leave along with the population of Mars as it's about to be destroyed by the sun - but you soon discover that it's not all just natural catastrophe....
I've never really been disappointed by Clarke, although I'm not sure if my pre-teen self would have enjoyed everything he wrote. Of the so-called 'Big Three' (Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein), Clarke maintained a consistently high quality of output not matched by the other two, in my opinion.
@@thelibraryladder I think I read my first Clarke when I was 11. Straight from The Hardy Boys to Clarke. It was the 2010: The Year We Make Contact movie that inspired me to read the book.
Nourse wrote some fun SF for kids. Trouble on Titan (part of the Winston juvenile SF series) was the first one I read by him. Nourse knew his subject matter in Star Surgeon, because he was a medical doctor in real life.
@@thelibraryladder Yes, his book Blade Runner is about a medical equipment smuggler, named for the scalpels. It was applied to the movie even though it does not make sense in that context.
Another great video BUT this is the problem of ALL popculture - kids are put aside! Btw i don't like young-adult/kids SF/Fantasy books. Maybe because i was reading Fables for Robots by Lem where i was 4-5 yo. Well my dad did ;) i just listen. When i was 9 i was reading Czas Przemian ( Times of change?) By Silverberg IT is still one of my favorite books
No problem! My main goal with this video is to help parents (and grandparents) identify SF books their kids or grandkids might enjoy. :) Thanks for watching!
An overview of Silverberg's adult SF output would be appreciated. He's written so many books, it's hard to know where to start
ooh i agree.
I plan to do that. In fact, I'm planning to do overviews of each of the SFWA Grandmasters as a way of providing roadmaps to their works. Unfortunately, there are nearly 40 SF authors who've received that award, so it's probably going to take me a few years to get to them all. I don't have Silverberg slated for the coming year, but he might be a good choice for 2024. Thanks for the suggestion!
My teenage entry to the genre or speculative fiction in general was the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Most of those are a mix of soft scifi, fantasy, and mystery/adventure but they still inspired me. You bet your butt I was walking out of every scholastic book fair with at least one arm full.
And occasionally on long winter nights, my Dad and I would listen to War of the Worlds. Still holds up beautifully
I still look back fondly on the afternoons and evenings after getting some Choose Your Own Adventure books from the library. The Cave of Time and Space and Beyond in particular stuck with me.
I was a little too old when the CYOA series began, but my younger brother really enjoyed them. I remember reading a couple of his copies out of curiosity and finding them quite fun and creative, but also too short (I wanted more story depth by that point in my life). When you listened to War of the Worlds, was it the original book or the 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation? Both are excellent, although Welles takes more than a few liberties with the story.
@@thelibraryladder Well that was N years ago...but I believe it was the radio drama version.
And I agree, because of their structure CYOA books had shorter stories. I would be interested to see a modern take on them with a little more heft. Although now I think that literary type narrative game market is filled with ttrpgs and the like
I love seeing this side of science fiction- without you I wouldn't get this exposure. As always quality. And its rather abnormal but your video inspires me to want to write science fiction books for kids! Thank you Bridger.
Thanks, Whitney! I too have been tempted to try my hand at writing a science fiction story for kids. There's a void in the genre for young readers in recent decades. But then I run into the brick wall of trying to come up with a compelling story idea. :)
As you might remember I have been reading some science fiction with my ten year old son and happened across this video which is exactly what I was looking for to find something for us to read together. I think it is super cool that you have thought about writing some children's science fiction. I am myself trying to put on to paper an idea I have for a book. Not so much geared towards kids but that kids would and could enjoy. If you ever do write anything, I will definitely buy it. Have you ever written anything before?
I struggled a lot with reading as a youngster. It was Robert Silverberg's Time of the Great Freeze that finally got me over the hump. It'll always have a special place in my heart because of that.
I loved H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, though I think I've always been partial to The Time Machine. That might have as much to do with my first experience, hearing UK actor Robert Hardy's abridged audio book my brother had on cassette, as it did with The Time Machine's quality. Though I do love the book.
The Tripods books were great. I think I got a boxed set of the four of them right around the time the prequel came out and devoured the series.
They're sort of borderline, I suppose, between Science Fiction and Fantasy, but I really like a lot of Philip Reeve's novels. He has a set of young reader aimed books starting with Larklight, that captures a sort of Victorian adventure vibe. His more middle-grade/teen aimed series Mortal Engines was a ton of fun. I wish the film adaptation had managed to capture absolutely any of the books' charm. I don't expect a film to be a perfect vision of a novel. But I do expect some of the heart of one to make it to the other, and that didn't happen. I've only read the first book in Railhead series, which is very Space Opera. I liked it, but I got sidetracked before the second book came out and never got around to finishing the trilogy.
Thanks for sharing! I had a similar reaction to the film adaptation of Reeves' Mortal Engines. The books are far superior. I haven't read the other two Reeves series you mentioned. Alas, I don't read as many children's books as I used to, now that my kids have gotten older.
TLL, this appeared on my daily YT feed today, I had not seen it before. I have a precocious 7yr-old grandson who is an advanced reader and I've been itching to get him acquainted with juvenile SF but had no idea where to look or start (web searches are notoriously vague and misleading I've found). So when I saw this it encouraged me greatly. Thanks so much for your perspective and your reviews and suggestions. Yet another bonus one enjoys being a subscriber to your excellent YT channel! Cheers.
Thanks, Rick! Depending on how advanced a reader your grandson is, I think John Christopher's Tripods trilogy is a great place to start. It was written for kids age 10-13.
@@thelibraryladder I will start there thanks much TLL. Cheers. :)
Robert Heinlein's "Between Planets", Robert Sheckley's "Status Civilization", Andre Norton's "The Time Traders", Harry Harrison's "The Stainless Steel Rat" were among the first sf books I read. :)
Excellent list! I didn't discover Sheckley until I was well into adulthood, and I wish I'd read him sooner. His sense of humor is a lot of fun. I binge read every book by Norton I could find as a kid.
I read and enjoyed Rendezvous this summer. The Dune director apparently is making it into a film so I figured I should read the books beforehand. How did you like the sequels? I should probably start the 2nd book sometime soon.
I've been looking forward to a Rama film adaptation for decades. At one point, around twenty years ago, Morgan Freeman and David Fincher were working on a film version, but they couldn't come up with a filmable script. The book sequels diminish in quality with each successive book. Rama II is the best of the sequels and, while it didn't live up to my hopes, it wasn't bad.
I started reading SF in seventh grade. My first exposure was when I was intrigued by an Andre Norton cover and checked it out from my school's library. I devoured everything I could get of her's. This was before the internet and I studiously kept a list of her novels, I never found them all and the list was lost but the fond memories are not..
Thanks for sharing that story! I started binge reading Andre Norton when I was around 9 or 10 after discovering her books Steel Magic and The Stars Are Ours in my school library. I'm particularly fond of her early books. I plan to do an overview of her works at some point in the next couple of years as part of a series of videos focused on the SFWA Grandmasters (Norton was the first woman to receive that honor).
My baby cousin is the sister I always wanted and when I run out of mythology books to gift her, you will be the reason I'm able to spoil her continuously
I'm so glad to be of service to you and your baby cousin! I have many more kids' book videos planned that I'll upload periodically. Thanks!
3:41 great clip from a GREAT movie (yes I said that)
When it came to sci Fi, there wasn't a lot that teachers or parents could really recommend to us kids in the UK back in the 90's. I'm not sure if it was frowned upon, but i think books were more focused on period fairy tales or modern silly circumstances and easier to read as opposed to looking to the future or as Ray would say "the possible" type stories.
If any that does stand out that we did look at back then was Ted Hughes 'The iron Man' which certainly felt quite exciting and different to read actually. There's a great illustrated edition of that book done by Laura Carlin a few years ago and is done very creatively and yet simple as well. Get it if you can :)
Great, Johnathan Cristopher I'll definitely check !! Thanks again :)
That Universal Studios intro made an impression on me when I first saw Waterworld in a movie theater almost 30 years ago. I thought the film was entertaining, and Kevin Costner's catamaran was very inventive. The story didn't seem to break new ground, though, because it was essentially a watery remake of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
Science fiction for young readers has been struggling as a subgenre for a while. Starting in sixth grade through high school, the only SF books my kids have been given the opportunity to read by their teachers are Lois Lowry's 'The Giver,' Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451,' and William Gibson's 'Neuromancer,' all of which are dystopian fiction, which seems to have taken over YA SF.
The Iron Man is truly a classic. I don't have the edition illustrated by Carlin. I'll have to check it out. Thanks for suggestion!
Great list!!! I can't wait to find these are read them myself.
Thanks, Penny! For someone who regularly reads fantasy novels (which you do if I'm not mistaken), the Tripods trilogy is a great place to start. At it's heart, it's really an adventure story that has science fiction elements in it.
Oh thanks!! I'll start there then
Just checked out this video after our chat on Discord. This is a great resource. My kid is only 4 so we're solidly in the "Peppa Pig" phase but I hope to start nudging him into science fiction
Thanks! Children's books were the original reason I started my channel. I was frustrated with the quality of many of the books published in recent years targeting 8-to-12-year-olds, which is the age when most lifelong readers develop their love of reading. The relative lack of good science fiction for kids was one of my big concerns.
I've since branched into other genres with my videos, but I try to make kid-focused videos periodically for parents who might like suggestions. This is just the first in what I intend to be an ongoing series of videos recommending classics for kids.
@@thelibraryladder that's great! I look forward to more
I read the Tom Swift Jr. books in the 60s, around the same time I was reading Heinlein's and Andre Norton's children's books. I used to ride my bike several miles to the local library to borrow them. I've got a complete set of the Heinlein juveniles and several of Nortons children's book now, and I reread them every few years.
War of the Worlds was one of the first SF books I ever read, because my father had a copy in his library (along with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, another one of my earliest SF books). I've got both of my fathers books in my own library, now.
I first read the Tripod Trilogy while I was in Jr. High School (13-14 years old) after finding it in the school library. It's been years so I should reread the series, now.
Surprisingly, given how many of Clarke's books I read when I was younger, I only read Redevous With Rama a couple years ago! It's definitely a great book.
Thanks for watching and sharing your childhood reading experience! Reading the Tom Swift Jr. books alongside Heinlein's juveniles was a little jarring for me as a kid. I enjoyed both sets of books, but only Heinlein's really took the science seriously. The Swift books were a lot of fun, but my analytical self couldn't avoid picking apart the questionable science underlying some of his inventions such as the polar-ray dynasphere, the triphibian atomicar, and the electronic retroscope. I plan to feature the Tom Swift Jr., Heinlein and Norton books in future videos.
this is a really great list. i actually just finished Rama Revealed a few weeks ago. i was very surprised about the “reveal,” i didn’t expect it to go in that direction at all. but it was very thought provoking all the same. i think that the john carter of mars series would fit snugly on a list like this! i would have been utterly in love with john carter and dejah thoris when i was still in grade school. i haven’t read the tripod trilogy, or heard of it for that matter, but i’m looking forward to enjoying it in the future :)
Thanks! I completely agree about the Barsoom books. I read them multiple times as a kid, teenager and adult. The last time I read them was about five years ago. I'm also planning a video retrospective on Burroughs later this year.
@@thelibraryladder that’s great, i can’t wait!
I remember finding a Tripods book on the book shelf at school and it was such a good read that it has stuck in my mind since that time.
That's how I found the series, too. I read it again with my kids a few years ago, and they (and I) really enjoyed it.
I just today tracked down Lost Race Of Mars, with very little to go on, except that there were two kids and a crude drawing of them on a reddish cover, and that it was out by about the end of 1963 when I read it. I'm pleased to see that the book and author are well regarded, and that as of this comment, Silverberg is still alive.
I'd heard a rebroadcast of the 1938 (?) "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast when I was about nine so I got that book for my birthday and then for Christmas I got the combined "The Time Machine" and "The Invisible Man." (Both books in an omnibus volume with a couple of nice articles about time and invisibility written for younger readers published by "Children's Press.") I'd recommend either of the stories for younger readers. Thanks for these videos!
I listened to a recording of that same Orson Welles radio play around the same age as you, and it motivated me to read the original novel.
I enjoy your channel because you take the time to evaluate whatever you're reviewing. Thank you again, this is very well done and I'm full of suggestions. If you can find the time I'd like to see here the same thing you did with Guy Gavriel Kay's work only with science fiction. This would be a huge undertaking if you ask me so I'm cool with waiting on this. Some of the other Science Fiction Alliance folks came close but your way of explaining the literature is erudite and I'd take your advice as to where to start with let's say some of the Golden Age or what most may consider "Classics". Thanks again !!
Thanks for the suggestion! I'm planning to do deep dives into the history and roots of the science fiction and fantasy genres in the coming year, including launching a series of overview videos about each of the SFWA Grandmasters. Nearly 40 authors have received that honor, so it's likely to take me a few years to cover them all. The format will be similar to what I did with GGK.
I agree with what you said about Heinlein's Juvenile stories. I have been plucking away at his bibliography for 30 years. I have 3 juvenile stories left. Silverberg was so prolific, it would be awesome just to meet him. One of the great gtrandmasters that is still living.
I imagine Silverberg would be a great person to have as a dinner guest. The conversation would be fascinating, given his central role working closely with other SF authors to popularize science fiction and help it achieve mainstream literary credibility in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
I loved reading the Tripods trilogy when I was younger. In the UK it was dramatised for TV but as far as I can remember, only the first two books made it to the sceen and of course it was not as good as the written word. I always remember a feeling of dread and anticipation when I was reading it and in the second book, I could barely breathe!
I wonder if I could ask any of the people commenting here, if they remember a story (I think it was a short story in a book with other short stories, possibly written by Asimov or Clarke)? It was about two children that were grown in a lab. They were studied by scientists and woken up for only a day or so every few years. Their ages were advanced artificially until they were adults. They were given false memories so they thought they were living full lives. It was so poignant that I have never forgotten it.
I've only seen a few snippets of that UK TV production and I was underwhelmed by the acting and production values. I've always wanted to see the trilogy get a big-budget film or HBO series treatment.
The short story you described sounds familiar, but I can't place it. (I've read thousands of SF short stories over the years, and many of them blend together in my memory.) Stylistically and thematically, it sounds like it might be Clarke, but Bradbury or Silverberg could be prime candidates as well. I'm planning a series of videos in the coming year on classic SF short collections and anthologies, so I'll keep my eye out for it. Thanks for sharing!
So i took a couple of recommendations from this video and purchased two here is my takeway:
Conquerors from the darkness by robert silverberg is a great short scifi novel. A young man goes from zero to hero in short amount of tome but the series of events flow very well and the story also has two major unexpected turns. I homeschool five children and my two readers are very advanced. I would say that book is certain good for a 9 year old, really an exciting story.
Rendezvous with rama was seriously awe inspiring and mind bending. It leaves many of my questions unanswered but such is the genre. I would recommend to a mature reader (certainly wouldn’t consider giving it to my 9 year old)due to the sexual explanations that are i think irrelevant to the story really. But super fun read, really catapults you into that cylinder.
Thanks for sharing! I agree that Rendezvous with Rama is best for mature kids. The sexual content is very brief and not lurid or central to the story. When I read the book as a kid, that content didn't even register with me. It wasn't until I re-read it as an adult that I noticed it.
I read Rendezvous with Rama in 7th grade because I thought the cover looked cool and it definitely turned me onto reading for fun instead of just for school.
I think that's a perfect age for reading Clarke's Rama. The book's short enough to not feel intimidating or too time-consuming, while the story is advanced enough to feel like a book for grown-ups at a time when many young readers are looking to graduate to books written for older readers.
Perfect video and perfect list for this age group.
Thanks, Michael!
The Tripods trilogy had a great adaptation in the back of Boy's Life magazine.
It was a graphic novel adaptation published in serial form, right? I've seen a few pages from it, and I thought the artwork was well done.
I loved John Christopher - as well as the Tripods, there was his Sword of the Spirits trilogy I was particularly fond of. However, what occupied me for a long time was the many dozens of Andre Norton books in my local library. I'm pretty sure I read them all. I recall the Solar Queen series, Breed to Come, and The Zero Stone with some fondness, though I haven't reread them as an adult.
I also liked several books by the author John Wyndham, and his post-apocalyptic story The Chrysalids in particular. If you know this book, I now live in "Sealand" for real.
Great comment! I too loved reading Norton and Wyndham when I was a kid, and I plan to feature them in my next set of SF recommendations for younger readers.
I wish I had tried a good Sci-Fi book when I was young - I remember seeing the Tripod Series in my school library, and finding those Hildebrandt covers tantalizing (which I'm now trying collect 2nd hand), I don't know if I was reading Goosebumps or Dragonlance at the time, but I was firmly in the Fantasy camp, and so I remain today without much Sci-Fi behind me (save in movies). I did enjoy the Giver, and a few Michael Crichton, but they didn't offer me a fantastical future or "off world" set dressing - the only one like that I tried was Orson Scott Card's five book "The Ships of Earth", which bored me altogether some way through book three. I wonder if I'd tried Ender's Game (which never crossed my path) or John Christopher instead, I might have read H.G.Welles and then who knows what doors that could have led to, what whole alternate reading history.
It's unfortunate that you didn't encounter good SF when you were young. I'm grateful that I was exposed to both SF and fantasy around the same time as a kid, so I developed an early love of both.
The good news is that you still have a lifetime ahead of you to make up for lost ground. The other channels in the recently created SF Alliance (linked in my video description) can provide a more exhaustive menu of reading suggestions because (a) they make more videos than I do and (b) they focus more heavily on SF than I do.
P.S. Card's Homecoming Saga (which includes The Ships of Earth) might be the worst books he's written. I DNF'ed the series about halfway through the second book, so you made it farther than I did.
@@thelibraryladder Glad to hear I'm not the only one to DNF Homecoming - it's a shame, I kind of liked the first book, save for that it convinced me it was going somewhere.
I've been watching booktube channels like Media Death Cult for a while, I've already got many probably great SF prospects at hand, I just need to devote my eyeballs to them over my other genres. I've already had a fantastic time reading "Dune" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", and I think I can depend of Dick and Herbert in the future.
I'm not super into sci fi or middle grade fiction but I've got Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars and Venus series on the way which I'm looking forward to
I was tempted to mention Burroughs' Barsoom series at the beginning of this video, because of the influence it had on the 'planetary romance' segment of the SF genre. Ultimately, I vetoed the idea because (a) the books have more in common with sword and sorcery fantasy than they do with science fiction, and (b) they weren't written specifically for kids (although I binge read them multiple times when I was about 11). The books are dated, formulaic and written with a breathless, pulpy style, but I still find them to be very fun reads despite their flaws. The first three books in the Barsoom series are essentially one long novel (so keep reading after A Princess of Mars--the next two books get better), while the rest are a series of standalones. I'm planning an overview of Burroughs sometime early next year.
@@thelibraryladder I'm very much looking forward to that Burroughs overview. Also worth mentioning that I've just finished the first Thomas Covenant trilogy and been reading through Moorcocks eternal champion sequence as per your recommendations. Your taste continues to impress
Great!
I suggest: do a video on Andre Norton. My favorites include THE ZERO STONE and sequel UNCHARTED STARS; also, STORM OVER WARLOCK, and THE TIME TRADERS.
Norton is on my list of authors I plan to cover. I read her extensively as a kid. The Stars Are Ours, The Moon of Three Rings, and The Zero Stone were three of my favorites.
@@thelibraryladder Those are great, but I swear by STORM OVER WARLOCK (which is not a Nazi book in spite of its title).
I also love her fantasy book STEEL MAGIC (aka GREY MAGIC).
I remember very well the first science fiction book I read: I was in Junior High (before Middle Schools) in the 8th grade. In the school library I found a copy of When Worlds Collide. That hooked me on sci-fi.
I saw the 1951 film adaptation of When Worlds Collide on TV when I was around the same age as you were, and it prompted me to seek out the original novel.
Also a great place for kids to get into reading is the comic(graphic novel). Maybe not for some kids but I loved them and still do lol is the 2000 AD comics.
Personally, I've been underwhelmed by most of the graphic novels I've read (most of which were written for kids). However, I'm all in favor of books that get kids to read more. Thanks!
I remember reading Alexi Panshin's "Rite of Passage".
That's one of the few Nebula winners I haven't yet read. I hope to remedy that this year. Thanks for sharing it.
Great video. One book I'm curious about is City by Clifford Simak. My son likes science fiction and he loves dogs so this would seem to be a perfect book for him. Is it kid appropriate? My son is 10. I'm not real picky about what he reads but I just hate for him to see the F bomb and sex stuff at his age.
Thanks for your question. It's been a few years since I last read it, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing age-inappropriate in City along the lines you mentioned. Ten might be slightly young for the book, though, simply because of the book's structure and the philosophical themes in it. Structurally, it's a collection of loosely connected short stories spanning millennia, so there isn't much of an overarching plot that runs through it, and some of the stories are much better than others. Thematically, it's kind of downer of a book, describing the future fate of humanity as going out with a whimper rather than a bang.
I don't think I would have enjoyed it much as a ten year old, but it probably would have resonated with me more by the time I was 12 or 13. (I first read it as an adult when I was in my 20s.)
@@thelibraryladder thank you so much for taking the time to give me such a detailed overview and thank you for delving into the kid appropriate science fiction books for us parents who want to share the reading experience with them.
My opening SF as a kid was The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Cameron (and all its sequels). I also loved The Spaceship under the Apple Tree trilogy by Louis Slobodkin. The Tripods trilogy by John Christopher was also a great love.
I never read the Slobodkin books, but Cameron's Mushroom Planet and Christopher's Tripods series were absolute favorites of mine.
I first discovered The White Mountains via Boy's Life when it was serialized. I then read the books a few times after that. I re-read it a few years ago via audio, and, surprisingly, holds up well.
I reread (listened to) the Tripods trilogy a few years ago with my kids, and I was really happy to discover that it continues to hold up well.
I started SF with Clarke, closely followed by Asimov's Space Ranger series. I, Robot is of course very accessible in middle grades.
I never thought of Rendezvous with Rama as a entry book for kids, but, yeah, it would work. I must have read it as a late teen or young adult, but I have read it a couple times since then. Still a favorite of mine, and a sub-genre of SF I miss (just exploring foreign worlds. Alan Dean Foster does this very well).
Yeah, I think Rendezvous can work for an advanced/mature middle grade reader, but it's probably best-suited as an entry point for slightly older readers.
"Cheyennes 6112" (William Camus & Christian Grenier, 1974?).
My first sci-fi read, way before I was aware that term was even a thing. It imprinted indelebly in my 8-year-old brain. I loved this book with a passion.
(It didn't hold up in an adult re-read, but boy did I fall in love with sci-fi after that. And ecology, and horses, and First Nations/Native Americans..).
That's great! I hadn't heard of that book until now. According to Goodreads, it seems it was only published in French and Spanish language editions. I wish more non-English language SF&F books were translated into English. My French comprehension is very rusty these days. Thanks for sharing!
@@thelibraryladder Exactly my motivation for learning new languages, to not have to wait for translations that might never come 😅
I’m 43 years old and I re-read the Tripods trilogy at least every couple of years because it is bloody excellent. John Christopher is the king of worldwide disaster SF with his adult works. Also, his YA Sword In Waiting trilogy is well worth a read too 😁
I agree. I think the Tripods trilogy holds up very well for both younger and older readers of today. I've also enjoyed his disaster fiction including Empty World, The White Voyage, and, particularly, The Death of Grass (US title: No Blade of Grass), which shocked me with its plausibility when I first read it. Thanks for watching and commenting!
I had the Tom Swift and the Mike Mars adventures . Later i read some Heinlein ' Tunnel InThe Sky'. At thirteen i found Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama ' a bit ' dry ' 😉 . Christopher's ' The Lotus Caves ' is a fine read .And if buying the Wells or any kids book , please avoid the 'abridge ' v...sions. Very good list .
Thanks! I plan to feature the Tom Swift (Sr. & Jr.), Mike Mars and Tom Corbett chapter book series in future videos. I've never read The Lotus Caves. I'll have to track down a copy.
I've made a sort of project in the last few years of seeking out modern middle grade science fiction - there are some great books out there but they often don't get the same level of promotion as middle grade fantasy. In my opinion the two best MG SF authors writing today are Christopher Edge and Alastair Chisholm - with my personal favourite book being The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day by Edge. They are both British authors though so I don't know whether or not they have been published in other countries.
Thanks for the suggestions! I haven't encountered either Edge or Chisholm before, and their middle grade SF books look very intriguing. They're both available here in the US, but as you noted, they don't seem to have received much marketing support. I now plan to check them out.
@@thelibraryladder You're welcome - I hope you enjoy them!
Oh my goodness, I hadn't thought about the Tripod trilogy since I read them in 1978 or 79. They were recommended to me by my 5th grade teacher, a woman whose name I have sadly forgotten and yet she had a profound influence on my life. She knew that I loved science fiction and recommended several series of books for me to read. Probably all book lovers have someone like that in their history.
When I was very young (probably 6 or 7) I read a series of adventure novels about people living in the world's ocean. I no longer remember the title or author, only fragmented pieces. I remember that they wore suits that allowed them to breathe water; the author described them as having tiny hairs that passed the oxygen along to the wearer. One character had lost an arm, and had an arm of a different ethnicity grafted in its place. They also had conflicts with walruses. If anyone knows anything about these books, I'd love to revisit them.
Hmmm...the only undersea stories for children from pre-1975 that come to mind are the Undersea trilogy by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson (Undersea Quest, Undersea Fleet, and Undersea City) and Attack from Atlantis, by Lester del Rey, but I don't remember the specific plot points you mentioned being in them. (It's been a very long time since I read them.)
@@thelibraryladder Thank you for that! I spent an hour going down an underwater science fiction rabbit whole, using Bing's chatbot to search for the stories. While I did not locate them, I did learn that characters with one arm that is a different color appear much more often then I thought, in that they appear in at least 2 series that have nothing to do with the series I'm trying to discover. I may read Undersea Quest anyway; I have always enjoyed Pohl's stories, and I don't mind reading stories intended for a younger audience.
I was a big fans of the BBC Tripods mini series. I only recently found out that it was based on a book series. I read Rendezvous with Rama earlier this year and it was excellent
I've been hoping for a big-budget film (or HBO/Netflix/Disney) adaptation of the Tripods trilogy for a long time. Now that VFX has gotten relatively easy to produce, I think it might happen in the next ten years if the film rights can be sorted out. Thanks for watching!
@@thelibraryladder Denis Villeneuve is supposed to be working in a rendezvous with rama adaption after he’s finished with Dune
Sorry for the spam; my train of thought is all over the place this morning. I don't know if this was part of your literary history, but in the mid-1970's the Doc Savage books, or at least some of them, were reprinted to coincide with the release of the (terrible) film Doc Savage - Man of Bronze. I got into those stories in a big way, and they gave me a lifelong love of pulp adventure stories. I don't know if I could recommend them to modern kids, but I found them enthralling. Of course, I didn't pay attention to problematic elements like Doc operating on criminals to remove the part of their brains that made them evil, or the guns that only knocked people unconscious. If you were ever also into pulp stories, I would love to watch you do a video on that some day.
Great suggestion! I read the Man of Bronze books as a kid back in the late 70s, and I have about a dozen or so of the books. They're fun, pulpy reads, although Doc wouldn't be considered a role model anymore, given today's ethical and cultural sensibilities. Ron Ely was a much better Tarzan than Doc Savage.
At some point, I intend to feature Doc in a video along with other pulp superheroes such as The Shadow, The Black Bat and The Spider. I have a lot of other videos ahead of it on my list, though.
I'd like to add one more to your young readers' SF recommendations: _The Forgotten Door_ by Alexander Key. He's best known for _Escape to Witch Mountain,_ and there are some similarities between the two, but I prefer the former title. A young boy falls through a disused space portal and lands on Earth with no memory of his origins. He is found and befriended by a local family, and as bits and pieces of his memory come back, he discovers that he has psychic powers - telepathy and a limited form of levitation - and a remarkable skill at carving. Later, the family has to protect him from a whole slew of misguided people and bad guys. It's not a long book, but I sure have enjoyed it since I first encountered it in our third-grade classroom library (every grade had one, which was separate from the main school library we all went to once a week). (Don't worry - I bought my own copy at a thrift store. I would no more steal a book than I would eat an amanita.)
Terrific suggestion! I'm very familiar with The Forgotten Door (I have a copy of it on a shelf about 20 feet from me). Like you, I prefer it over his Witch Mountain books, and I devoured them all when I was in elementary school. The Forgotten Door is on my list of children's books I plan to include in future videos of this type.
Have you read any Chris Wooding novels? I adore them for the way they take middle readers seriously while also catering to them. In particular Poison and The Fade are amazing fantasy novels short on exposition about their worlds making them fast paced despite having to introduce you to a new world. His book Storm thief is also a blend of steam punk and more traditional fantasy tropes but is held back by deeper exposition that approaches preachiness in describing “democracy” but its ease of access allowed me to read it in the 4th grade alongside books like The Hatchet, watership down, where the red fern grows, the hobbit, and then the lord of the rings in 5th grade. Woodings books were my introduction to many things not just post-Tolkien fantasy because my mother read Poison to us when I was in 3rd grade. He’s imaginative and excellent at giving enough explanation of the setting to hook but still keep you inventing extra lore.
You were reading some great ones at an early age. I tried reading Watership Down in elementary school, but it didn't connect with me at the time. However, when I gave it another try as an adult ten years later, it became one of my all-time favorite books.
@@thelibraryladder it’s my favorite book of all time, the beginning of chapter 4 in particular is the most beautiful and satisfying piece of prose ever written.
I loved sf/fantasy as a kid in the 70s and 80s, but I will admit it was harder to find for kids then. I didn't find Heinlein till an adult (and frankly, I only have enjoyed his juvies). I wish I had found Tom Swift. I found Oz books and Tarzan, but missed the Venus and Mars ones. Kids today have such a dearth of choice. I remember going to the libraries and finding books I felt were more for girls easily (I know I should have just read them now). But I saw Blume and Clear
y all over the place, but fiction, just for boys (or what seemed targeted to boys) was rare. I only found The Hardy Boys and found those harder to read for some reason.
I remember exactly what you're describing. My elementary school library had very little SF for kids (although it's where I first encountered Rendezvous with Rama). Mystery stories, historical fiction, modern (realistic) fiction and fantastical stories tended to populate the shelves. The few SF titles it had (such as the Barsoom, Tom Swift Jr., Mushroom Planet and Matthew Looney series) tended to lean heavily on fantastical elements rather than science.
I forgot to say that I am 100% with you on Heinlein's best books being his juvenile stories. Podkayne of Mars, The Red Planet, Methuselah's Children, Have Space Suite Will Travel, Citizen of the Galaxy, Starship Troopers... Heinlein is criticized for the political viewpoints of some of his stories, but those same viewpoints are wildly different between the various tales. Compare, for instance, Citizen of the Galaxy and Starship Troopers. I don't think that they were intended to proselytize to young readers, but I've never researched the subject. Of course, it helped that those stories were easily found in the public and school libraries of my youth.
I also enjoyed Asimov's Lucky Star books. They are particularly fascinating because they are supposed to be relatively hard science fiction, but the science in them is laughably out of date. Remember when Venus was a water world in every science fiction story set on, or near, Venus?
When I was a kid I remember very much enjoying Slan by AE Vogt, and Way Station by Clifford D Simak.
Both of those still hold up pretty well today, particularly Way Station, in my opinion.
Don't forget Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and though not as good, Dig Allen Space Explorer. For me my journey started with Tom Swift Jr in 5th grade. (a late bloomer in reading) The old Tom Swift books followed - upstate NY in 1910 was as alien as any alien planet. Silverberg's Revolt on Alpha C, with Clarke's The Sands of Mars as my first adult SF, and the usual suspects, Heinlein, Norton, etc.
You had a great introduction to SF. I plan to feature the Tom Corbett, Tom Swift (Sr. & Jr.), and Mike Mars SF series in future videos, as well as the Heinlein and Norton juveniles. Thanks for sharing!
Another book I enjoyed when I was a kid, and recently rediscovered, is THE BLACK CLOUD by Fred Hoyle.
A few more obscure sci-fi books for young readers: A BILLION FOR BORIS by Mary Rodgers (author of the book FREAKY FRIDAY), STRANGER FROM THE DEPTHS by Gerry Turner, and (this one isn’t obscure, but most people don’t think of it as a kids’ book) FLATLAND by Edwin Abbot
Great suggestions! I love A Billion for Boris and Flatland. I've never read the Gerry Turner book, though. I'll see if I can find a copy of it.
@@thelibraryladder Good luck. Not easy to find. I'm still trying to get a copy of the unabridged version. The story is about kids who love scuba diving and find an underwater cave with an intelligent pre-historic fish-man in it, in suspended animation.
A modern scifi young adult trilogy I really enjoyed is called the Chronicles of the Dark Star. The first book is called "The Last Day on Mars." A group of teens has to leave along with the population of Mars as it's about to be destroyed by the sun - but you soon discover that it's not all just natural catastrophe....
Thanks for the suggestion! I haven't run across those books before. I just looked them up, and they sound terrific.
The answer is: anything Arthur C. Clarke.
I've never really been disappointed by Clarke, although I'm not sure if my pre-teen self would have enjoyed everything he wrote. Of the so-called 'Big Three' (Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein), Clarke maintained a consistently high quality of output not matched by the other two, in my opinion.
@@thelibraryladder I think I read my first Clarke when I was 11. Straight from The Hardy Boys to Clarke. It was the 2010: The Year We Make Contact movie that inspired me to read the book.
9:00 Vocabulary will probably not be much of a barrier. Just keep a smartphone or pad PC by your side, with quick access to Google or some such.
My first legit scifi book was The Supernaturalists by Eoin Colfer, same guy who wrote the Artemis fowl series
I read that one (along with the Artemis Fowl series) with my kids several years ago. It's a fun book.
I would add John Wyndham.
I’ve read about 20 books this year but my TBR just keeps getting longer😂
I'm sorry for adding to your burdens! :D
Fortunately, all of these books are relatively short.
Conquerors from the darkness sounds like one piece
That's interesting. I only have passing familiarity with manga, so I didn't make that connection. Thanks for sharing that observation!
Star Surgeon by Alan E Nourse
My first SF book, 4th grade. SF saved me from the inane nuns.
Nourse wrote some fun SF for kids. Trouble on Titan (part of the Winston juvenile SF series) was the first one I read by him. Nourse knew his subject matter in Star Surgeon, because he was a medical doctor in real life.
@@thelibraryladder Yes, his book Blade Runner is about a medical equipment smuggler, named for the scalpels. It was applied to the movie even though it does not make sense in that context.
Another great video BUT this is the problem of ALL popculture - kids are put aside!
Btw i don't like young-adult/kids SF/Fantasy books.
Maybe because i was reading Fables for Robots by Lem where i was 4-5 yo. Well my dad did ;) i just listen. When i was 9 i was reading Czas Przemian ( Times of change?) By Silverberg IT is still one of my favorite books
No problem! My main goal with this video is to help parents (and grandparents) identify SF books their kids or grandkids might enjoy. :) Thanks for watching!
Missed this one. I bought it from the Scholastic Book club in 1959. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_on_Alpha_C
That's another good one for kids by Silverberg. Thanks for sharing!