specsaregood
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Did you read the rest of the Silo series? The prequel and sequel? All of them are good.
Books for Children and Young Adults
- Thread starter helmuth_hubener
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Did you read the rest of the Silo series? The prequel and sequel? All of them are good.
helmuth_hubener
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It was actually hard to figure this out! The series naming/releasing system was a bit convoluted. If I remember from my research, there is still one part we haven't read, that's the last numerically but actually a prequel.
specsaregood
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Wool (first book) middle of timeline, best book
Shift (2nd book) prequel, 3rd best book
Dust (3rd book) sequel, 2nd best book
undergroundrr
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This is a heck of a thread. Sorry I missed it first time around.
presence
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I listened to Tom Swift and His Airship as an audiobook once on a long car trip. It was pretty good.
Even though there is nothing explicitly libertarian in these books, I think there is actually great value in them from a libertarian-propaganda perspective. Libertarianism is dependent upon a self-reliant, confident, individualistic temperament. An old-fashioned temperament, in other words. Tom Swift books excel at advertising and glorifying this temperament. They are respectful of their main character, and show him eminently capable of thinking for himself and doing anything he puts his mind to and works hard at.
And so, their meta-message is one that supports the foundational underpinnings of libertarianism. Supports it very, very strongly, but invisibly! And without a single philosophical manifesto or John Galt radio speech.
YES!
presence
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So question... I haven't read Harry Potter series and my kid is enthralled; 1/3 into 6. I've heard book 6 and 7 are "dark". What does this really mean? Anything I should look out for as a parent of a 7 year old reading stuff meant for higher reading level?
helmuth_hubener
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Thanks, specs! That's a lot simpler than I remember it! The author combined multiple books into one or something like that, which confused me.
I think that the only one we've read is Wool, then. That's good news: plenty more!
Not a kids' book, by the way. There was one intimate scene we skipped over.
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helmuth_hubener
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Andrew Henry's Meadow
Here's a book with a lot of Orange Splot and a lot of Tom Swift, too, both mixed together! A boy's family grows frustrated with his endless projects. Who wouldn't love a helicopter in the kitchen? But somehow, they don't. So, he devises a plan (a very simple, practical plan!) to solve the problem and enable him to build and construct all the creations he wants!
Here's a book with a lot of Orange Splot and a lot of Tom Swift, too, both mixed together! A boy's family grows frustrated with his endless projects. Who wouldn't love a helicopter in the kitchen? But somehow, they don't. So, he devises a plan (a very simple, practical plan!) to solve the problem and enable him to build and construct all the creations he wants!
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Ender
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Love the Potter books and there is nothing wrong with 6 & 7- a good ending.
Ender
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Cool!
Your son sounds like me as a kid. I was reading when I was 3 and have never stopped.
Asimov is awesome! Have him read Red Planet next by Robert Heinlein. It's a sci-fi youth book by the great Heinlein that turned me onto sci-fi forever.
All the Ender books are excellent, as well.
presence
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6 days
652 pages of Harry Potter 6
Done
he's now 20 pages into book 7
I'll check out Red Planet. I'm a Heinlein fan as well.
My kid has hemophilia though and
Stranger in Strange Land p208
is one of those subjects that I just don't know what to do with yet.
As he's showing a tendency to read an author dry, I might avoid Heinlein until he's a little more emotionally mature.
https://books.google.com/books?id=p...IIjAB#v=onepage&q=heinlein hemophilia&f=false
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Ender
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Stranger in a Strange Land is my favorite all time sci-fi but it definitely has something in it to offend everyone.
Red Planet is a youth book and is incredibly good.
helmuth_hubener
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I personally would recommend that obviously Stranger in a Strange Land is not a kid's book and would not be something to give your 7-year-old. Or even your 12-year-old. But, that's just my opinion.
jllundqu
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I'm sure it's been mentioned, but for young adults, I would also throw in:
Ender's Game (Book changed my life it's so good)
Ender's Shadow (Equally epic)
The rest in the Ender's series are ok too, but nothing like the above.
There's some violence and death so not for young or sensitive readers.
Ender's Game (Book changed my life it's so good)
Ender's Shadow (Equally epic)
The rest in the Ender's series are ok too, but nothing like the above.
There's some violence and death so not for young or sensitive readers.
Ender
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Great books! The 3 and 4 books of the Ender Series are quantum physics- incredible.
Working Poor
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For young children I recommend Dr Seuss. I enjoyed reading the Tales of the Arabian Knights when I was a pre teen. I also enjoyed reading Author Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes".
helmuth_hubener
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I'm surprised I haven't seen this posted yet...
https://tuttletwins.com/golden/
Based on Ron Paul's "A Foreign Policy of Freedom"
I ordered my copy today. And if you haven't bought the others yet, I highly recommend them!
Announced here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?509375-Tuttle-Twins-New-Book-Based-on-Ron-Paul-s-Book
helmuth_hubener
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Pookie Puts the World Right
His father’s dental cast, writes Graham Greene near the beginning of The Power and the Glory ‘had been [Trench’s] favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano, but fate had struck’. Trench is a dentist, trapped by his chosen profession in a horrible third-world dictatorship in Central America. Greene ponders the way, when we are very young, that chance events, objects or people may become father to the man. ‘We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.’
Too true. Pookie made me a Tory.
My new copy of Pookie Puts the World Right has arrived. I’d lost the old one, but tracked down another on the internet. Though more than 60 years old, it’s in fine condition, only 24 pages, but big and bold and colourful, with lots of striking pictures. The Pookie series, by Ivy L. Wallace, was published by Collins at the end of the 1940s, and popular with children from about four to eight years old. I was perhaps five when I read Pookie Puts the World Right. It fast became my favourite book.
Only on rereading, though, do I see its influence. I had remembered the wonderful pictures, but now I see that, insinuated into the colour sketches and the plot itself, was a moral (almost ideological) framework to which my tiny being must have thrilled. The moral chimed with an infant soul.
Older readers may remember this series. Younger readers should know that Pookie was a small winged rabbit with blue trousers, rescued in distress by a loving, poor but honest girl called Belinda, who lived alone in the wood, made Pookie a padded bed in a sort of shoebox, and helped him grow wings. The pair became the greatest friends.
One late autumn day, Winter — drawn as a scary giant with icicle fingers — arrives. There’s a great storm. Trees blow down. Burrows flood. All the animals in the wood (Pookie’s friends) are devastated; homes destroyed, food stores ruined, wings and paws wounded. Pookie and Belinda take in the casualties, warm them by the fire and feed and tend to them. But Pookie (with whom I identified) strides out into the storm in a rage and, shaking his little paw at Winter, tells him to stop being so cruel, go back to the North Pole and never return.
And to Pookie’s shock, Winter withdraws. Pookie is briefly feted. Autumn is followed by spring. Then all nature is thrown into confusion. Flowers have no time to prepare to flower again; dead leaves and branches have not been cleared, nor animals refreshed by hibernation. Now all the woodland folk protest, and Pookie becomes a figure of hate.
So, in the biggest adventure of his life, Pookie flies all the way to the North Pole, nearly perishing in the attempt. He confronts Winter a second time (this full-page picture was so frightening I kept it under my pillow to sneak glances in the night). Pookie confesses he had been wrong, apologises, and begs Winter to return. The little rabbit now realises that the seasons have a purpose, that lazy or foolish animals with ill-sited burrows or nests have to be shown their folly, and every creature given an incentive to work hard, prepare and store.
Admiring Pookie’s courage, Winter relents, agrees to return, and wafts the exhausted bunny home on a storm cloud.
At once I see why my small being resonated to this story. It gave me a parable for what I must already have wanted to believe. I read and read that book, and never forgot it.
Five years later I pulled George Orwell’s Animal Farm from a bookshelf and, believing it to be a simple tale about animals, read it — all of it — in a day, with no notion that it was an allegory. Orwell’s beautiful, clear English prose drew me in.
And I knew from the start that the animals’ revolution could never work out, that their takeover of the farm must fail. I quickly sensed that good intentions would not be enough, and felt a sneaking regard for the pigs for getting a grip on the situation: at least they made the farm work. I remember wondering whether a system could be devised to give the less intelligent animals a better life, while still rewarding the pigs for their organisational abilities.
All this I recall quite clearly from a misty day in the Vumba mountains in Southern Rhodesia, nearly 60 years ago. I had no idea Snowball was Trotsky or Napoleon Stalin. I did not know that animalism was an allegory for socialism. But I knew that ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ was a mindless chant; and the moment the slogan ‘All animals are equal’ appeared, I thought ‘yeah, right’. Orwell’s parable was deep: it pointed to problems with socialism in principle, not just to problems with some of its practitioners. I’m not sure he understood that.
At ten, I did. I grasped the true moral of this book better than its author, who was presumably making a somewhat tedious, factional point about rival versions of socialism. At a certain, deep level, and without entirely knowing what socialism was, my ten-year-old self saw here a demonstration of why all socialism was doomed.
Now you may suggest (and when discussing this with me, the editor of this magazine did suggest) that my analysis may mistake cause for effect. Did Pookie make me a Tory — or was it being already a proto-Tory tot that made Pookie’s story powerful to me? Maybe both; but surely children’s stories can reinforce, can channel a developing mind?
Be that as it may, I shall on finishing this column turn one last time to that thrilling picture of Winter with icicle fingers and icicle nose, and know, as I knew then, that austerity can be a redeeming force. I must lend the book to George Osborne to put under his pillow.
-- Matthew Parris http://archive.is/2uE3a
His father’s dental cast, writes Graham Greene near the beginning of The Power and the Glory ‘had been [Trench’s] favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano, but fate had struck’. Trench is a dentist, trapped by his chosen profession in a horrible third-world dictatorship in Central America. Greene ponders the way, when we are very young, that chance events, objects or people may become father to the man. ‘We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.’
Too true. Pookie made me a Tory.
My new copy of Pookie Puts the World Right has arrived. I’d lost the old one, but tracked down another on the internet. Though more than 60 years old, it’s in fine condition, only 24 pages, but big and bold and colourful, with lots of striking pictures. The Pookie series, by Ivy L. Wallace, was published by Collins at the end of the 1940s, and popular with children from about four to eight years old. I was perhaps five when I read Pookie Puts the World Right. It fast became my favourite book.
Only on rereading, though, do I see its influence. I had remembered the wonderful pictures, but now I see that, insinuated into the colour sketches and the plot itself, was a moral (almost ideological) framework to which my tiny being must have thrilled. The moral chimed with an infant soul.
Older readers may remember this series. Younger readers should know that Pookie was a small winged rabbit with blue trousers, rescued in distress by a loving, poor but honest girl called Belinda, who lived alone in the wood, made Pookie a padded bed in a sort of shoebox, and helped him grow wings. The pair became the greatest friends.
One late autumn day, Winter — drawn as a scary giant with icicle fingers — arrives. There’s a great storm. Trees blow down. Burrows flood. All the animals in the wood (Pookie’s friends) are devastated; homes destroyed, food stores ruined, wings and paws wounded. Pookie and Belinda take in the casualties, warm them by the fire and feed and tend to them. But Pookie (with whom I identified) strides out into the storm in a rage and, shaking his little paw at Winter, tells him to stop being so cruel, go back to the North Pole and never return.
And to Pookie’s shock, Winter withdraws. Pookie is briefly feted. Autumn is followed by spring. Then all nature is thrown into confusion. Flowers have no time to prepare to flower again; dead leaves and branches have not been cleared, nor animals refreshed by hibernation. Now all the woodland folk protest, and Pookie becomes a figure of hate.
So, in the biggest adventure of his life, Pookie flies all the way to the North Pole, nearly perishing in the attempt. He confronts Winter a second time (this full-page picture was so frightening I kept it under my pillow to sneak glances in the night). Pookie confesses he had been wrong, apologises, and begs Winter to return. The little rabbit now realises that the seasons have a purpose, that lazy or foolish animals with ill-sited burrows or nests have to be shown their folly, and every creature given an incentive to work hard, prepare and store.
Admiring Pookie’s courage, Winter relents, agrees to return, and wafts the exhausted bunny home on a storm cloud.
At once I see why my small being resonated to this story. It gave me a parable for what I must already have wanted to believe. I read and read that book, and never forgot it.
Five years later I pulled George Orwell’s Animal Farm from a bookshelf and, believing it to be a simple tale about animals, read it — all of it — in a day, with no notion that it was an allegory. Orwell’s beautiful, clear English prose drew me in.
And I knew from the start that the animals’ revolution could never work out, that their takeover of the farm must fail. I quickly sensed that good intentions would not be enough, and felt a sneaking regard for the pigs for getting a grip on the situation: at least they made the farm work. I remember wondering whether a system could be devised to give the less intelligent animals a better life, while still rewarding the pigs for their organisational abilities.
All this I recall quite clearly from a misty day in the Vumba mountains in Southern Rhodesia, nearly 60 years ago. I had no idea Snowball was Trotsky or Napoleon Stalin. I did not know that animalism was an allegory for socialism. But I knew that ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ was a mindless chant; and the moment the slogan ‘All animals are equal’ appeared, I thought ‘yeah, right’. Orwell’s parable was deep: it pointed to problems with socialism in principle, not just to problems with some of its practitioners. I’m not sure he understood that.
At ten, I did. I grasped the true moral of this book better than its author, who was presumably making a somewhat tedious, factional point about rival versions of socialism. At a certain, deep level, and without entirely knowing what socialism was, my ten-year-old self saw here a demonstration of why all socialism was doomed.
Now you may suggest (and when discussing this with me, the editor of this magazine did suggest) that my analysis may mistake cause for effect. Did Pookie make me a Tory — or was it being already a proto-Tory tot that made Pookie’s story powerful to me? Maybe both; but surely children’s stories can reinforce, can channel a developing mind?
Be that as it may, I shall on finishing this column turn one last time to that thrilling picture of Winter with icicle fingers and icicle nose, and know, as I knew then, that austerity can be a redeeming force. I must lend the book to George Osborne to put under his pillow.
-- Matthew Parris http://archive.is/2uE3a
helmuth_hubener
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Do you have any favorites to contribute, [MENTION=2785]undergroundrr[/MENTION] ?
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