Road Trip Stories - Another Ender Fan
Posted by Andie Ryan Blog at 8/8/2009 12:16 PM 
Categories: Book Tour and Road Stories
Tags: Ender fan boy readers Orson Scott Card Analog Science Fiction and Fact Ender's Game reluctant readers Ender books teachers librarians Ender series books for boys
Categories: Book Tour and Road Stories
Tags: Ender fan boy readers Orson Scott Card Analog Science Fiction and Fact Ender's Game reluctant readers Ender books teachers librarians Ender series books for boys
At one signing, it seemed that every kid who came into the store thought I worked there. Restroom directions, a request for "Princess" books, even finding someone's Mom.
One young man didn't seem to believe that the book on the signing table was mine -- meaning that I wrote it, a point on which he required clarification. I wanted to ask if he was from Brooklyn.
He told me he needed a book to read for school that was starting in a few too-short weeks. Mine's not it, I thought. We started talking about what he liked to read. He wasn't a Harry Potter fan, a little surprisingly, and sort of shrugged when I went through the names of some of the more popular series I knew. He was clearly intelligent, so I told him about a book called Ender's Game, the award-winning sci-fi classic by Orson Scott Card about kids who are trained with games to prepare for interstellar war. Not surprisingly, his eyes lit up.
Off we went to the science fiction aisle. On the shelf, instead of finding the novel, we found a collection of novellas by Card that included Ender's Game. I hadn't known that the novel began life as a shorter piece that was originally published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. We had a brief talk about the difference between a novella and a novel, and he thought hard about whether reading the shorter piece would spoil the novel (he decided it wouldn't). And even though he may have thought that the novella was just a cool name for another form of CliffsNotes, he left clutching that book in his hands.
There has been some controversy about the story's violence -- Earth is, after all, at war. I don't happen to agree with these arguments in an age of video games that rival some of the bloodiest TV or film or, frankly, actual war footage that's broadcast into our homes. It's just such a good story, and what aren't kids exposed to these days? Even though it's not generally classified as a young adult series, the Ender books are credited with making readers out of pre-teens, particularly boys, who hadn't previously been that into books. One of my nephews has a copy that's practically in tatters.
What do librarians and teachers out there think about the Ender books? What other titles in particular have gotten kids excited about reading?
Maybe that's the important thing. For me, it was the one experience that made the whole tour worthwhile.
And Spencer, if you're reading this someday when you're totally and completely bored, I hope that Ender leads you to many more books and many more discoveries.
One young man didn't seem to believe that the book on the signing table was mine -- meaning that I wrote it, a point on which he required clarification. I wanted to ask if he was from Brooklyn.
He told me he needed a book to read for school that was starting in a few too-short weeks. Mine's not it, I thought. We started talking about what he liked to read. He wasn't a Harry Potter fan, a little surprisingly, and sort of shrugged when I went through the names of some of the more popular series I knew. He was clearly intelligent, so I told him about a book called Ender's Game, the award-winning sci-fi classic by Orson Scott Card about kids who are trained with games to prepare for interstellar war. Not surprisingly, his eyes lit up.
Off we went to the science fiction aisle. On the shelf, instead of finding the novel, we found a collection of novellas by Card that included Ender's Game. I hadn't known that the novel began life as a shorter piece that was originally published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. We had a brief talk about the difference between a novella and a novel, and he thought hard about whether reading the shorter piece would spoil the novel (he decided it wouldn't). And even though he may have thought that the novella was just a cool name for another form of CliffsNotes, he left clutching that book in his hands.
There has been some controversy about the story's violence -- Earth is, after all, at war. I don't happen to agree with these arguments in an age of video games that rival some of the bloodiest TV or film or, frankly, actual war footage that's broadcast into our homes. It's just such a good story, and what aren't kids exposed to these days? Even though it's not generally classified as a young adult series, the Ender books are credited with making readers out of pre-teens, particularly boys, who hadn't previously been that into books. One of my nephews has a copy that's practically in tatters.
What do librarians and teachers out there think about the Ender books? What other titles in particular have gotten kids excited about reading?
Maybe that's the important thing. For me, it was the one experience that made the whole tour worthwhile.
And Spencer, if you're reading this someday when you're totally and completely bored, I hope that Ender leads you to many more books and many more discoveries.
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