Shelly's Book Blog

I am still working through the books on School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. I can definitely see Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, showing up on next year's most challenged books list. This is a left-leaning, heavily political book. It seems to be set sometime in the near future, and the main character is 17-year-old Marcus, known in cyberspace as "w1n5t0n" (say, "Winston"), who lives in San Francisco. Marcus is a super-smart techno geek who is not averse to a little light-hearted hacking. He's not a bad kid, but he is a lot smarter than most of his teachers and enjoys getting away with what he can.

Enter the terrorists: one day while Marcus and some of his friends are ditching school, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge, and Marcus is arrested by the Department of Homeland Security. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so he is considered a suspect in the bombing. Here is where it gets really political and controversial. Marcus is taken to a secret prison (that Marcus later calls Gitmo-by-the Bay), interrogated, tortured, and held without charges, all in the name of "national security." He is finally released, but then the rest of the story tells of Marcus's unconventional political activism. He is so incensed by what happened to him that he is determined to fight the DHS in order to win back his, and every other American's, civil rights. The debates that raged just after 9/11 come back in full force in this book: how do we balance privacy and security? Do we have to throw the Constitution out the window in order to feel safe from terrorists? Or is compromising our civil rights tantamount to letting the terrorists win? I read this one aloud to my boys, and I'm glad I did because it gave us the opportunity to discuss these issues together.