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Sci-Fi Books For Pre-Teens?
o2binbuzios writes "I have two pre-teen boys who are avid readers, and I am going through my mental catalog for great sci-fi & fantasy books for them. What are some of the classics (and maybe new additions to the classics) that would be great for them to read? I am asking because some of the 'straight-up' classics I remember actually seem kind of dark & cynical for younger readers. Starship Troopers and some of the other Heinlein are definitely darker and more political than I remember... Foundation Trilogy and psycho-history maybe too dry. Road-trip reading season is upon us — what are the good reads for the kids in the back seat?"
When I was a kid, I had a lot of fun time reading Journey to the Center of the Earth, from the Earth to the Moon, etc.
Always at the top of my list. It's one of those books that when you finish, you think "how the hell did he fit all that in so few pages?" I can't remember if there's any sax or violins, but that's good for kids too.
.nosig
Almost anything by Terry Pratchett.
Ender's Game, of course.
Back in six grade, we read "Invitation to the Game" by Monica Hughes, and I've been hooked on scifi ever since.
Brief plot synopsis: unemployment is skyrocketing due to mass mechanization of society, although the unemployed are well taken-care-of due to the same efficient use of resources. It can be dull to be unemployed, at least until you get an invitation on your doorstep mentioning a secret game with a very exclusive list of players.
Mystery/adventure/scifi, very highly rated, but do not read the Amazon editorials (thar be spoilers afoot).
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Citizen of the Galaxy, Farmer in the Sky, Have Space Suit will Travel, Starman Jones - all by Heinlein. These are his juveniles and are all good stories, drama and action along with some moralizing about studying hard etc ... I read them as a kid and was hooked. The Larry Niven short stories.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Anne McCaffery has some good ones, but they are generally dragon & space oriented. Pretty good reads, and there's quite a few in the series.
Orson Scott Card has Ender's Game (and several more in that series). These are definately classic.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, and the follow-ups are all very well written, though some of the deeper themes might be a bit above your kids depending on how sharp they are.
CS Lewis' Space Trilogy is excellent, though it gets pretty violent, and might be a bit advanced for pre-teens.
Terry Pratchett's books are funny, but they tend to spoof the politics and happenings of the US and the UK, so your kids might not grasp all the jokes. Much better would be Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the (increasingly misnamed) Hitchhiker's Trilogy (there are five books there).
If you like, you might even start them on JRR Tolkien, which is more fantasy than sci-fi, but definitely a classic. You also have the advantage of the movies once they're done with the books. (Books are better though.)
Those are my picks, and that should be enough reading for at least this summer, if not longer. You can also walk into your local Borders and ask someone. There's tons of great kids books in Sci-Fi...
My advice would be, don't hold back. I had a voracious appetite for books as a teenager which crossed many demographics and genres. But the most memorable to me are the ones with more of an adult edge that really made me think. Personally, I think we spend too much time holding children back and looking to make their lives better than our own. Not every novel I've read was a classic, but there are very few I would say I didn't at least enjoy. Let them read everything you can get your hands on that looks interesting.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
I mostly bring up old-timers because they're the ones I read when I was young. Asimov's Robot novels like "Caves Of Steel" might be more appealing than the Foundation stuff. Heinlein wrote a lot of juveniles. I've read that "Starship Troopers" was supposed to be a juvenile but it was deemed to rough by the editors and re-marketed as adult. However, "Double Star" is a good juvenile by Heinlein.
In the old days, Sci-Fi was mostly short stories, go find good anthologies! The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame anthology of the best science fiction stories is a good place to start.
Other recommendations would be "Voyage Of The Space Beagle" by Van Vogt, "Wasp" by Eric Frank Russell.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
No doubt Slashdot is full of Harry Potter haters. I was one, too, until I actually read the entire series last month. It's still not exactly my cuppa, but it's an incredibly well-crafted work of fantasy fiction for young adults. The first couple of books are pure wish-fulfillment, which will appeal to any pre-teen. The books are too long for young readers to make it through all of them back to back, though, so by the time they get around to the later volumes, they will be just the right age to appreciate the darker aspects and more complex themes of the series's conclusion.
Unfortunately, most kids will probably just watch the movies.
Breakfast served all day!
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a good, easy read, and is what actually got me started reading Sci-Fi.
Ender's Game is excellent, and while a little dark in places, it's no darker than most classic fairy tales.
Also, if you're at all interested in getting them some fantasy books, two of the absolute best reads would have to be Clive Barker's The Thief of Always, and China Mieville's Un Lun Dun.
"Foundation" is not "too dry". The best thing you can do for your kids is to give them reading material -- sci-fi or any other genre -- that challenges their mind, and makes them think.
Before Foundation, though, get them started on three Robot novels, then the seven Foundation books. After they're done with Asimov, give them the three Lord Of The Rings books. I read all three LOTR in my early teens, in high school. They weren't "too dry", in the least. I loved them. I had no problems with it, and English isn't even my native language.
Don't be afraid to challenge your kids. Challenging reading material is very good brain food. Other suggestions:
* The first three Mars books, by Edgar Rice Burrows. Some of that (mostly the first book) is a bit dated, and a bit bizarre (everyone on Mars walks around naked, and Martian women lay eggs). But, once you get passed the weird stuff, it's great pulp.
* War of the Worlds, by HG Wells
* A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, by Mark Twain. Yes, it's sci-fi/fantasy.
That should be enough to last until next year. Come back then for more stuff to suggest.
I'm not a huge sci-fi reader, but also never really found what I read to be all that difficult.
'Dune' is a great place to start out. I was never able to get through the sequals, but the original is a classic. Possibly a bit advanced and cynical, but definitely on the 'required reading' list. The Sci-Fi channel miniseries is also excellent.
Another obvious recommendation is The Hitchhikers Guide series. They're easy, they're funny, and unfortunately not strictly sci-fi. Either way, I'd have a hard time thinking of reasons not to read something by Douglas Adams.
On the fantasy end of things (more my tastes, and still closely related to SF), I'd strongly recommend His Dark Materials, LoTR (if you can manage to get through the first 250 pages), and anything by Terry Pratchett.
If your sons have any interest in The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, I'd highly recommend starting early, as the average lifespan of the typical human is only just barely long enough to cram them all in (I jest, but seriously.... if you follow the user-submitted reviews of the books on Amazon, the readers get fewer and angrier as the series goes on with seemingly no end in sight).
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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A problem with the Skylark and Lensman series is that they were written when eugenics was still popular in the US, before the NAZIs made such a graphic display of their dark-side implications. The good guys are good guys and the bad guys bad guys largely due to their genetics. The last book of the Lensman series shows that the police/military organization you've been following was actually a secret breeding program, run by behind-the-scenes aliens, to produce a human master race to rule the galaxy and wipe out their ancient enemies.
Whenever I feel like trusting government officials I re-read the section of _The Grey Lensman_ where an "unattached lensman" (a supercop, with carte blanch to do whatever he pleases, no oversight, massive resources, and a gadget that lets him wiretap minds remotely) wipes out a nest of dope dealers by calling in the equivalent of a massive surprise nuclear carpet-bombing on the city they're in, to vaporize them all before they can get away.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Wow, another Bester/"Stars" fan? I thought I was among the five people left in the world who loved this story. I was about 12-13 at the time I read it for the first of perhaps half-a-dozen times. Now that you've reminded me about it, I'll have to read it again. It's in my now almost fifty-year-old copy of A Treasury of Great Science Fiction edited by Anthony Boucher which I just found on the bookshelf.
I like many of the Heinlein novels from his early period, particularly the ones that were political in nature. His depiction of an America with politics based on fundamentalist Protestantism seems remarkably prescient since the Reagan years. Once sexuality appears on your childrens' horizons, it might be time to read Stranger in a Strange Land.
I was a pretty devout Catholic as a child and remember the impression Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Star" made. Like the protagonist in the story, it may have marked the beginning of doubt.
Another author that I loved in my youth was "Andre" Norton, the pen name of Alice Mary Norton. When she started writing SF and fantasy, women were so rare in the profession that she took a man's first name to get published. Looking at her bibliography, I recall reading a number of books that she wrote in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
Finally if your children like fantasy, I strongly recommend Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy, another series intended for young readers but with great appeal to adults as well. Le Guin was the daughter of the famous American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, an influence that's obvious in many of her best works like The Dispossessed.
My wife is the current librarian of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, and there's a Children's Recommended Reading List that the club has been keeping up for some time. There's a lot of stuff on there, and it should offer some guidance.
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The first time I read the Narnia books, I had no idea there were "Christian overtones." But I was young and just enjoying a quick fantasy.
When I read the Narnia books when I was a kid I had no idea there were "Christian overtones.". When I read them again when I was 33 I still had no idea there were "Christian overtones."
I think whatever overtones you're reading are more about what YOU put into what you're reading than what's written on the page.
I know C.S Louis was considered by himself and others as a christian writer, but it's quite a stretch to think that the Narnia series are any more "christian" than most other fantasy novels.
Unless you consider anything with good and evil epic battles and sacrifices to be "christian", but that seems like an awfully broad definition.
i can still tell you the exact time and place i picked up my first sci-fi read.
i was thirteen, in junior high school, and it was Heinlein's "The Star Beast". that was decades ago.
been hooked ever since. don't always have time for it, but always come back to it.
don't live in the parent's basement or fit any other definitions of hardcore nerd- or geek-dom, but picking up that first sci-fi book (and i subsequently read _all_ of heinlein, hebert, asimov, campbell, pournelle, niven and the rest) definitely started me on a path to looking at the world with different eyes.
the guys that write sci-fi (especially in the "golden age") are/were genuine pioneers of thought. fuck disney; they're the _real_ imagineers.
i can't recommend more highly turning your kids on to a "thinking out of the box" genre like sci-fi.
as to which first? don't know; times change, but you see where i started, for better or worse.
hell, i'm just glad someone wants their kids to actually read.
The "sinner" is replaced by the blameless sacrifice, who is shamed, mocked then killed, the women weep over the body which disappears, then the blameless sacrifice is resurrected.
Lion the witch and the wardrobe.
You mad
Don't forget RAH's first - Rocketship Galileo, and also Space Cadet, Time for the Stars. Also: I think 'The Rolling Stones' is the correct title of 'Space Family Stone', although I understand many of his early works were originally published serially, and under different titles; that may be the case here, but the novel has always been known to me as 'The Rolling Stones.' I would also include 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' and 'Starship Troopers' here, and perhaps 'The Puppet Masters.' I read all of these before I hit 12, and had no problems with them. Indeed, Moon is perhaps my favourite book to this day, even though I don't agree with some of Heinlein's social or some of his political views, it certainly formed or firmed a lot of my beliefs then and since. I don't see any need to avoid political stuff simply due to being young. On the contrary, much like with pets, it's good to get exposure early, else you might develop an allergy later in life. :)
Other good ones include Isaac Asimov's "Lucky Starr" books (originally credited to his alter ego, 'Paul French', I think). There are also Schmitz's "Telzey Amberdon" books, as well as his classic "The Witches of Karres." Clarke's "Islands in the Sky", Gallun's "The Planet Strappers" (hard to find, but awesome), "Across a Billion Years" by Silverberg, "Space Angel" by John Maddox Roberts, "Healer" by F. Paul Wilson, "Eridahn" by Robert Young (dinosaurs! Time travel! Martians! Aliens! (yes, Martians and Aliens are listed separately here :)), someone else already mentioned "Welcome to Mars" by Blish, and I'll certainly second that. There's a LOT more to E.E. Doc Smith than his Lensman and Skylark books, and I think I'd recommend them all. "Spacial Delivery" by Gordon Dickson was a good one, as are "Talking to Dragons" by Patricia Wrede, (which is apparently part of a series. This is the only one that I've read, and it stands alone brilliantly), the Harper Hall trilogy by Anne McCaffrey (set on the Pern world), and the undersea books by Jerry Pournelle (I think) I remember as being quite fun, too. Also: Robert Aspirin's "MythAdventures" books, and Piers Anthony's "Xanth" books (though the older you are, the more you'll get the 'awful' puns).
Many, if not most, of these, will need to be purchased used, due to the sad state of the publishing industry. *sigh*
I actually wrote a gigantic list on this subject several years ago on Slashdot - you may be able to find it via a search by using some of the more unique titles or names listed here as keywords.
Anything written by Arthur C Clarke. I was devouring everything clark when I was around 10. I started with Rendezvous with Rama, which remains my favorite book of all time. It was actualy on the pre-teen shelf at the library when I was a kid. The sequels are really good, too, imo... though many disagree. The 2001 series is good, Hammer of God, Songs of Distant Earth, Childhood's End. Too many to list. Sometimes the themes are a little advanced, but don't underestimate young readers. I think kids should pick up more advanced books early anyways... it helps development. Too many adults these days are still stuck in a Dr. Seuss world =)
Nicodemus
Or as my wife like to succinctly put it "OMG WTF Jesus Lion"
You don't remember these books as dry and cynical because you didn't care.
You're not seeing them the same way today. Just as I look back on books I loved as a child and see new things, so do you. But the fact remains: they were good books. Children are very, very good at ignoring the things they don't understand in favor of the things they do.
Consider just handing them Heinlein, and letting them figure it out for themselves. Children are robust little machines for making sense of the world. Give them "Stranger in a Strange Land"; all the sex and religion parts whizzed right by me as a kid, and I mainly came away from it with an appreciation for cultural differences. So if you were looking at that book thinking the sex and religion parts were too much, you might be right, but you're also throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
Lloyd Alexander's books. His "Chronicles of Prydain" (starting with "The Book of Three") are probably his best work, but he's got some other wonderful stuff.
Jeff Smith's Bone -- don't hold the fact that it's a graphic novel against it. :)
Tweet, tweet.
Karma
From McSweeneys:
3-Line Narnia
C.S. LEWIS: Hey, a Utopia ruled by children and populated by talking animals!
THE WITCH: Hello, I'm a sexually mature woman of power and confidence.
C.S. LEWIS: Aaaahhh! Kill it, lion Jesus!
Terry Pratchett's books are funny, but they tend to spoof the politics and happenings of the US and the UK, so your kids might not grasp all the jokes.
You're just thinking of the Discworld, which isn't even Sci-Fi. Then there's the Diggers and the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, both of which are actually Sci-Fi series written for children. Kids should be able to get those jokes. They have lessons in them, too. It's a complete package. Pratchett also happens to be an amazing writer. His command of language, plotlines, and character development are a wonder to behold. People have written doctorate theses examining the art that is Terry Pratchett's work. So he's definitely a good choice.
Anne McCaffery has some good ones
You're reading them as an adult, and you're glossing over things. Her novels are definitely PG-13, or possible R rated. She makes sex and death an everyday part of her novels, and not the Judy Bloom way. Characters are mating with/killing other characters, and she's describing how it makes them feel, which makes it much more real than seeing random redshirt die in Star Trek, or Kirk sleep with the green chick.
CS Lewis' Space Trilogy is excellent, though it gets pretty violent, and might be a bit advanced for pre-teens.
Definitely. The language is too complex for most. It's also highly Christian. As in, the protagonist is a Christian fighting the forces of Satan with the aid of angels. And this isn't all symbolic/easy to overlook like it is with the Chronicles of Narnia. So if you're hostile to Christianity, don't have them read it. If, however, you're not, it's a really good read. One of the first sci-fi novels written where you actually end up getting to know what the characters are *feeling*.
Which is a problem with the early works of the genre as a whole (i.e., pre-1960 or so). Start with people who actually write well to get them hooked on reading. Sadly, quite a few of the classics - Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Wells - are terrible writers. They have excellent ideas from the broad "wouldn't this make a good story?" sense, but their command of language, plot development, and characters aren't as vivid as many of their counterparts of the times they wrote. That was just the way that sci-fi was. Most important of these is the characters. The timid reader has to become attached to them early on in the story so that he'll keep reading.
Later, once they're voracious readers, they can take on the guys who have great ideas but don't write well. They won't need to constantly be fed the writing equivalent of high definition to want to "view" it.
And for that reason, I definitely like the parent. These writers he has chosen are really good at writing to grab the readers and hold their attention.
Bearing that in mind, I have two more authors to add:
David Eddings - he's known for his endearing characters. Unfortunately, I don't think he's ever strayed from writing fantasy. The important poitn is that you can basically start with "you liked Harry Potter? Why don't you read this..." IMHO, going from Harry Potter books to David Eddings is a fairly natural progression. Once you've absorbed those, you're pretty well prepared to move into heavier stuff.
Alan Dean Foster - writes, among other things, the "Pip and Flinx" novels. While he's not the greatest writer in the world, Flinx is a young boy at the start, and very well developed as a character. Young readers will identify with the feelings and attitudes that Flinx goes through as he transitions into someone remarkable.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
H Beam Piper The Fuzzy series are great books Most can be found on the gutenburg project
As John W. Campbell, the science fiction editor and writer noted years ago, "It ain't the things that you don't know tha
The burning lands series has some great elements of questions about science and technology whether or not its use is ultimately good or evil -- good food for thought for youngersters raised in the Internet age, and also is sex-scene free.
Additionally, if you read some books you now think are too old for your kids, maybe you should consider that those books were too old for YOU, and you turned out fine! I cringe when my son reads MAD, but it was probably just as nihlistic and subversive in the 1970s as it is today.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
The following are all "coming of age" stories which I hope might appeal to your children. Most are winners of the Nebula and or Newberry prizes for literature - which generally means that they can be found in a local library. I will not bother to list all of the wonderful Heinlein novels and stories as they clearly have many champions, though I will plug the anthology "The Past through Tomorrow" which hooked me at age nine and started a life long passion for reading.
David Eddings
Lloyd Alexander
Ursula LeGuin
R. A. MacAvoy
T.H. White
That should keep them busy over the summer.
Over 50 authors sorted by chronological age of readers. Some (e.g. Heinlein) have books for younger readers, but continuing with the author leads to adult books. All (except the Acorna series) are accessible to older readers.
L. Frank Baum - classic Oz for the very young
Lloyd Alexander - Prydain
John Christopher (Samuel Youd) - Tripods series.
Susan Cooper - Dark Is Rising series
Robin McKinley
Robert Asprin - Myth Adventures and Phule series. Other series should wait until mid-teens. Just bought Dragon's Wild -- not read yet, but seems more adult.
Jody Lynn Nye - Mythology
Terry Pratchet - Discworld
Christopher Stasheff - Warlock series, earliest books will need to be reread when older; middle of series is great for children; latest are romances for late teens.
Craig Shaw Gardner
Piers Anthony - Xanth
Brian Jacques - Redwall
Lyndon Hardy - Only one fantasy trilogy.
Harry Harrison - Stainless Steel Rat series. Many other books for different age groups.
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover
Katherine Kurtz - Deryni
Barbara Hambly
Anne McCaffrey - Acorna series is for young children, painful for adults. Talents, Brainships, and Crystal Singer are for any age. Dragonriders vary starting late teens.
Joel Rosenberg - Guardians of the Flame series; warning: main characters die!
Stephen R. Donaldson - Mordant's Need (fantasy), then Gap series (SF). Covenant series for late teens.
Alan Dean Foster - pulp writer great for children but too many clichés for adults.
Edgar Rice Burroughs - classic Tarzan, Mars, and Pellucidar are mandatory.
C. S. Lewis - Narnia
Gordon Dickson - Dorsai (especially appealing to boys), many others.
Terry Brooks (Magic Kingdom for Sale series)
J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter, mandatory for this decade
Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series is great for boys
John DeChancie - Castle series
Fred Saberhagen - Empire of the East and Swords series
Frederick Pohl
James P. Hogan - SF
Laura Resnick - Fantasy
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game, Shadow series, Enchantment, Songmaster, Magic Street.
Spider Robinson - Deathkiller trilogy and short stories. Callahan's Series for late teens (fun but adult-themed jokes would be missed when very young.)
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. - Ecolitan and Recluse series.
W. Michael Gear - Now writing long-winded pulp with his wife, but his Spider trilogy (and "The Artifact" prequel) is incredible (warning: main characters die!)
Philip José Farmer - World of Tiers
Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth series starts well
Roger Zelazny - Amber
David Farland (Dave Wolverton) - Runelords
Jules Verne - classic
H. G. Wells - classic
Harry Turtledove - alternate histories, often fantasy.
Douglas Adams - mandatory for potential nerds.
Arthur C. Clarke
Charles Ingrid - SF
Robert L. Forward
Isaac Asimov
Robert Heinlein - mandatory for sci-fi discussions.
Poul Anderson
Larry Niven - Ringworld, etc.
Jerry Pournelle
Greg Bear
Ray Bradbury
Mike Resnick
C. S. Friedman - often requires rereading to understand (even for adults)
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Chances are they'll like it too. I was 13 when I read LOTR, and Dune. When I was 11-12 I "discovered" Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, Bradburyand other grandmasters, as well as the Star Trek novels. Those guys are famous for a reason.
Might want to try some collections of short stories, and see what they like. You might already have it in your collection. My library, at the time, had YA stickers on books (young adult), and I remember cruising around the library, looking for those stickers for a few years.
I also used to read the first page in a book, and some other random page just to see if I liked it, or the style. Try that with them.
..........FULL STOP.
Where did we get the idea that pre-teens can't be exposed to sex in any way? It's a good idea to read books before recommending them to your children to make sure the presentation of sex isn't sinister in any way, but the mere presence of sex shouldn't disqualify a book.
I see several posts on this page where people rule out any sex whatsoever, but nothing at all lamenting the fact that most classic sci-fi is absurdly sexist. Usually naively and unintentionally sexist, perhaps, and only occasionally misogynistic, but not suitable to be the bulk of your kid's literary diet.
In fact, the best reason for tolerating a little sex is that most of the non-chauvinistic sci-fi does contain sex. Plus, it is a good idea for kids to be self-consciously, abstractly wondering about sex before they encounter their own urges in a concrete form. They aren't going to take their ideas from you, their parents, and the alternatives are books, movies, TV, and peers. Obviously, good books and a few movies are your best hope if you want your kids to take a thoughtful, critical approach.
I don't know ANYTHING about pre-teens except what I know from being one, but I know I read several books about sex as a pre-teen and was alternately amused and horrified by the unreflective, superstitious, fetishistic approach to sex that my peers took to sex. Whatever they heard from anyone between their age and twenty-one, they took as gospel truth. Whatever they knew at a given time was assumed to be pretty close to the whole truth. Good science fiction is a wonderful inoculation against those attitudes. (Unfortunately, it seems that most science fiction is optimized to sell to people who would rather fantasize about sex than think about it, but you just have to find the exceptions.)
Here are a few books that might be suitable for preteens.
Island , by Aldous Huxley. I actually read this as a pre-teen. The main thing I took away from it is that sex and love present some thorny problems, and different people have come up with many very different ways of coping with them. It influenced me to approach sex with a combination of compassion, love, and pragmatism, in that order. I learned to keep that attitude to myself in the macho culture I grew up in, and gave up on it altogether by the time I went to college, but eventually my adult experiences with sex brought me right back to where Aldous Huxley started me out. This is a no-brainer choice to give to freethinking kids. It does advocate judicious use of hallucinogens for spiritual purposes, but I read and admired it as a preteen and was never tempted to test that particular idea. (Twenty years later, I still haven't.)
Fledgling , by Octavia Butler. Perhaps this one should be saved for older teens. I really don't know what to say about this book except that it made me think. I'm normally a pretty quick reader, but I kept putting this one down just so I could think for a while. (I know, I'm supposed to do that with every book. So I'm a philistine; sue me.) The takeaway lesson from this book is that people have to be very ethically careful about relations of power and dependency.
Stranger in a Strange Land , by Robert Heinlein. The older I get the more I realize that Heinlein was a pompous dick who loved to put ridiculous ideas over on people, take undeserved adulation from naive people (like my teenage self,) and then defend himself against the critics by saying he was just "throwing things out there" or "seeing who would take him seriously." So I would definitely rer
Sure, you can propose some books you think they will like, but please also take them to a library and let them browse and pick up whatever they want. This is how you get kids into reading in the first place. We are all different, I have a lot of books that are dear to me that I've pushed on this or that youngling, and with some I have been successful, with some I have failed totally. I think I bought my sister Michael Ende's "Momo" twice by mistake, and she never read it once.
Real readers start omnivorous, reading all sort of good as well as bad books, but of all the books I read as a child, very few of the more important (for me) were "for children".
Just make sure you use the paperback version. Otherwise, you might:
a) hurt the kid.
b) hurt your arm.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.