First Book selections

After thinking about which books to select for the start of the Raiareads program, I decided on Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and True Grit by Charles Portis.  They are two excellent books - both adventure stories involving young teens but written 20 years apart and set in vastly different worlds.  Ender's Game is a futuristic book where the entire human race is at war with an alien species.  One child is forced to go through a treacherous military academy in order to become a general and ultimately defeat the aliens.  In True Grit, a fourteen-year-old girl's father is murdered by an infamous criminal, and she decides to track him down with the aid of a U.S. Marshal named Rooster Cogburn.  She hunts down the man who killed her father and discovers more about herself along the way.  Both books require their hero to muster courage in the face of unknown threats, and though one involves a boy in the future and the other centers on a girl in the past, both stories allow their main character to develop self-awareness and integrity they never knew they had.  As an added bonus, both novels have been made into really great movies - definitely see them but try to read the books first.   I hope you guys enjoy them as much as I did!