Bonnie Gray <bgray@ECE.UCDAVIS.EDU> wrote:
> Some of the recent postings concerning sf/fantasy we read as
>children got me thinking: does anybody know of or own a list of
>good children's sf/fantasy? Specifically, a girl-friendly one?
Don't underestimate the Heinlein juveniles. Not too long ago, I ran into a
copy of _Citizen of the Galaxy_, remembered how I'd been struck by it when
I read it once, decades ago, and picked it up.
While the protagonist is male, there are clear, easily swallowed lessons
about intellectual, emotional and moral maturing, and pointed observations
about the silliness of sexism and ethnocentrism. (I'm not sure the word
"sexism" had been coined when the book was written, but for one interval,
the boy lives in a matriarchal culture, and later is in one where the men
running things can't imagine women being competent to do Real, Important
things -- clearly making those men look foolish. And one of the twists in
the final resolution has the hero being saved by the disciplined efforts of
the sheltered rich girl he ends up pairing with.
Neil Rest
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