The Girl Who Owned a City

Author: O. T. Nelson

Age: Late Elementary to Middle School

Themes and topics for discussion: Survival, forms of government, civic responsibility, education

Summary: A plague has wiped out everyone over the age of twelve, leaving the children of the world to fend for themselves.  As the supplies from their old lives begin to run out, some children turn to the relative protection and stability of gangs.  Lisa has other ideas; refusing to cave in to mob mentality, she organizes the neighborhood children, finds new sorces of supplies, and establishes a fortified city.  Yet every moment her peace and comfort are threatened, both by the growing gangs without and the growing unrest within.

Review:  While I thoroughly enjoyed the premise of this book (especially considering how fond I am of speculative fiction), but the problem arose when the narrator begins overemphasizing his libertarian views through the young protagonist, to the exclusion of all other views. As an adult, it is easy for me to discern real truth from propoganda, but the young people targeted by this book are likely to take the author's views as truth (especially since that is what the author calls his views in the book).While I'm not an advocate for censoring books, I am an advocate of knowing what your children (or in this case, students) are reading and giving them guidance. Personally, I think this would have been a better book if it had given options, showing how other children may have formed other communities that were different, but just as successful (or at least hint at this idea).  Instead, the book suggests that all other children have either joined gangs or perished.  I find this difficult to stomach, even with the oldest children only being twelve, and I would hope that even young readers would pick up on this flaw.

A Christian Perspective: I don't find anything necessarily ojectionable about this book except for the fact that there are much better options out there as far as speculative fiction for children.  The bottom line is that this one can easily be read or passed up.