Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox was one of the first science fiction titles I ever read (Uglies by Scott Westerfeld was first). Before I read either of these titles, I was pretty sure that sci fi was for geeks, nerds and other socially awkward types. It just wasn't cool. Then I became hooked on how the mix of technology, deceit and suspense came together to create something that I could. not. put. down. Now science fiction is practically all my students read. And this trailer is another favorite.
P.S. The other day, while I was working on weeding the library's fiction collection, I came across Peter Dickinson's Eva (1990), which is about a girl who wakes up from a coma and can't remember her past. She wakes up in the body of a chimpanzee, but I wonder if Pearson has read it and whether it inspired or influenced her. It hadn't been checked out in many years and was a paperback in poor condition, so it wound up in the discard pile, but I've put it on my "to read someday" list. Anybody read it?
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I've read Eva, and I think it came up in one of the classes (yours? another one?) when someone presented about The Adoration of Jenna Fox. I found Eva harder to read than a lot of more contemporary YA lit, and also sort of unsettling - almost like The Chocolate War in the sense that the ending might or might not be publishable today. (Part-humans, and characters negotiating bodies that seem completely foreign to them, is of course a great working metaphor in YA lit. Others off the top of my head are Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause and The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's a recent Phoenix Award winner ("should have won the Newbery" award given by the Children's Literature Association to a book that didn't win a major award 20 years earlier). Although I seem to remember that Eva *did* win some award, and that I read it off an award list, although I don't remember which one. http://www.childlitassn.org/images/resources/resources-Children-squo-s_Lit_-_Phoenix_Award_Brochure_2012.pdf
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