Little Brother

Genre: Science Fiction

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. New York : A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 2008.

[Book cover credit: www.alibris.com]

When San Francisco’s Bay Bridge is blown up in a terrorist attack, the government takes control of the city to protect the citizens. But is taking away all of their freedoms really the right way to protect them. See what Little Brother does when he feels the government is treating the citizens unfairly.

Marcus Yallow code name w1n5ston (Winston) is a senior at Cesar Chavez High School in the San Francisco Bay area. He is what Bill Gates might be like if he was a teenager. He is always several steps ahead of the adults that think they understand the technology. From page 21:

“Library books are bad news. Every one of them has an arphid-Radio Frequency II tag-glued into its binding, which makes it possible for the librarians to check out the books by waving them over a reader, and lets a library shelf tell you if any of the books on it are out of place. But it also lets the school track where you are at all times. It was another of those legal loopholes: the courts wouldn’t let the schools track us with arphids, but they could track library books, and use the school records to tell them who was likely to be carrying which library book.”

When terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge, Marcus and his friends are questioned by Homeland Security as possible terrorists. This book has been compared to George Orwell’s 1984, with an updated twist. Big Brother may be watching, but Little Brother has something to say about it.

Grade 8 and Up-

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