Juvenile Science Fiction Reads
High Tech Tales:
Anderson, M.T. - Whales on Stilts - Racing against the clock, shy middle-school student Lily and her best friends, Katie and Jasper, must foil the plot of her father's conniving boss to conquer the world using an army of whales.
Forester, Victoria - The Girl Who Could Fly - When homeschooled farm girl Piper McCloud reveals her ability to fly, she is quickly taken to a secret government facility to be trained with other exceptional children, but she soon realizes that something is very wrong and begins working with brilliant and wealthy Conrad to escape.
Hulme, John – The Glitch in Sleep - When twelve-year-old Becker Drane is recruited by The Seems, a parallel universe that runs everything in The World, he must fix a disastrous glitch in the Department of Sleep that threatens everyone's ability to ever fall asleep again. (Young Adult)
Lubar, David - My Rotten Life - Tired of continually having his feelings hurt by popular students and bullies, fifth-grader Nathan agrees to try an experimental formula, Hurt-Be-Gone, and becomes a half-dead zombie, a condition which, he soon discovers, has some real advantages.
Lynch, Chris - Cyberia - In a future where electronic surveillance has taken the place of love, a veterinarian is putting computer chips in animals to control them, and those creatures choose young Zane, who understands their speech, to release captives and bring them to a technology-free safety zone. The sequel is Monkey See, Monkey Don’t.
Pearson, Ridley – Disney after Dark - Five young teens tapped as models for theme park "guides" find themselves pitted against Disney villains and witches that threaten both the future of Walt Disney World and the stability of the world outside its walls.
Wilson, Daniel – A Boy and His Bot - When young Code falls down a hole while following a mysterious robotic insect, he lands in a world that defies all imagination. Everything in Mekhos is made from metal and circuitry, including the citizens-who happen to be robots.
Space and Aliens:
Carman, Patrick - Atherton: the House of Power - Edgar, an eleven-year-old orphan, finds a book that reveals significant secrets about Atherton, the strictly divided world on which he lives, even as geological changes threaten to shift the power structure that allows an elite few to live off the labor of others.
Cottrell Boyce, Frank - Cosmic - Super-sized, eleven-year-old Liam makes a giant leap for boy-kind by competing with a group of adults for the chance to go into space.
Daley, Michael J. – Space Station Rat - A lavender rat, which has escaped from a laboratory, accidentally stows away on a space station and befriends a lonely young boy.
DiTerlizzi, Tony – The Search for WondLa - Twelve-year-old Eva Nine is being raised by Muthr, a pale blue robot who is loving and maternal, in an underground home on the planet Orbona. When a marauder destroys her home, she leaves Sanctuary in a quest to find other humans like herself.
Haddon, Mark - Boom! - When Jim and Charlie overhear two of their teachers talking in a secret language and the two friends set out to solve the mystery, they do not expect the dire consequences of their actions.
Mackel, Kathy –Alien in a Bottle –With the help of his star-gazing classmate and an assortment of aliens from outer space, teenager Sean Winger tires to find a way to convince his parents to let him pursue his dream of becoming a glassblower.
Nelson, Peter- Herbert’s Wormhole - When almost-sixth-grader Alex, a video game fanatic, is forced on a "playdate" with his neighbor Herbert, an inventor, the two travel to the twenty-second century and face off against aliens, who are not as beneficent as most people think.
Rex, Adam - True Meaning of Smekday - When her mother is abducted by aliens on Christmas Eve (or "Smekday" Eve since the Boov invasion), 11 year-old Tip hops in the family car and heads south to find her and meets an alien Boov mechanic who agrees to help her and save the planet from disaster.
Service, Pamela – Escape From Planet Yastol – Eleven-year-old Joshua Higgins' prize-winning science fiction novel draws the attention of sinister blue aliens who capture Josh and his sister Maggie and take them to the planet Yastrol, the setting of his novel.
Time Travel:
L'Engle, Madeleine – A Wrinkle In Time – Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin travel through time and space in search of their father, a government scientist who has gone missing after working on a mysterious project called a tesseract.
Pratchett, Terry – Johnny and the Bomb (The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy) - Having stumbled upon a way to travel through time, Johnny knows exactly when a German bomb will be dropped on his English village. Time travel turns out to be tricky, however, as it takes Johnny and his friends several trips to alter history just enough to save their town, but also to ensure that everything stays the same when they return home.
Soup, Dr. Cuthbert – A Whole Nother Story - Ethan Cheeseman, genius scientist, has invented a time machine. Unfortunately, when spies, corporation thugs, and shady governmental organizations hear about the machine, they try to steal it and the family is forced to run for their lives.
Stead, Rebecca - When You Reach Me - As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1970s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.
Post-Apocalyptic
Diamond, Emily - Raiders’ Ransom - In 22nd-century Great Britain, where climate change has caused vast flooding, the piratical Reavers kidnap the Prime Minister's daughter and thirteen-year-old Lilly Melkun, an English fisher-girl, takes her seacat on a daring rescue attempt, with a mysterious talking jewel from a past computer age tucked in her belt as ransom.
DuPrau, Jeanne Books of Ember: City of Ember - In the year 241, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day to be a Messenger to run to new places in her decaying but beloved city, perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.
Haddix, Margaret Peterson - Among the Hidden - In a future where the Population Police enforce the law limiting a family to only two children, Luke has lived all his twelve years in isolation and fear on his family's farm, until another "third" convinces him that the government is wrong. (Young Adult)
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