After reading Unwind by Neal Shusterman, I've been wildly searching for programming ideas. As a high school student I was very interested in books like 1984 and Brave New World. Today, many science fiction books are aimed at high school aged youth. Books like Little Brother by Cory Doctorow are aimed at issues that are very relevant to today's teens.
Both Unwind and Little Brother present different solutions to today's world problems, and their fallout. Both books show that problems like terrorism and the abortion debate can easily get out of hand and destroy lives. The idea that technology can monitor our every move or be used to reorganize our body parts into the body of another is shocking. And yet, like all good fiction, these books are both based on facts.
Unwind includes a BBC article about the stealing and selling of newborn's body parts as well as a post to eBay on the sale of a human soul. The take home message is that we are almost at the point where ths novel could take place. We do harvest organs from one body and use them in another. There have been examples of murders that occur because of people's reactions to abortion. This is the reality our world.
One display idea would be to put of fact or fiction posters along with facts and have patrons vote on whether or not it was true. This would help form a background as to the strangeness of our world. These fact or fiction displays could be physical posters or on the library Web site. They could be surveys that go out to an entire school, or a question of the day board.
For both books, it would also be interesting to have maps on display that show the action in the books. By showing users the locations of the action, it will help them to interact with a book's plot on another level.
To reinforce the information from Little Brother, a library could invite a hacker to come speak, or an engineer to show students how things work. It would even be interesting to get donations of old electronics and take them apart and put them back together again.
Both books fall outside the typical gendered nature of teen books for girls are mostly about love and teen books for boys are only about adventure. They both feature male and female main characters. They both give full voice to the difference in perspective that males and females have in any given situation. They both allow young people to imagine what could happen if certain rights are signed away by the government. Both books also show the power that teens can have to make the world a better place.
Another programming option for students would be to brainstorm a way to solve societies problems based on a local youth movement. The library staff could research and present examples of actual youth movements and their affect on the local community.
Also, the librarian and book group could talk about copyright law and creative commons licensing. Little Brother has a Creative Commons license and is available for free download online. Fans have translated the book to various langauges and uploaded it to the Web. Students could discuss licensing, copyright and the rights of users to materials.
Sources:
Cory Doctorow's site for Little Brother; http://craphound.com/littlebrother/
"Bongs, Virginity and Other Stuff You Can't Sell on Ebay" by David Kravets. Wired Magazine, February 11, 2009. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/02/bongs-virginity/
"Ukraine baby theft claims probed" BBC News, August 26, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4189558.stm
Neal Shusterman's site for Unwind; http://www.storyman.com/books/unwind.html
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