Little Brother

Title: Little Brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Teen
Copyright: 2008
ISBN: 9780765319852

Reading Level/Interest Age: Grade 9 and up

Genre: Adventure/Thrillers--Espionage and Terrorism

Reader’s Annotation: In the aftermath of a terrorist attack on San Francisco, Marcus and his friends fight to win back the civil liberties the Department of Homeland Security has taken away using hacker technology.

Plot Summary
When Marcus (aka w1n5t0n, pronounced Winston) and his friends get picked up by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on San Francisco, Marcus’s insistence on his right to privacy angers his interrogators. He is finally let go after days of brutal questioning and humiliation, but is warned that he’s not free—the DHS will be watching him. When he gets out he discovers that the DHS is now watching everyone, employing unprecedented surveillance measures in the name of safety. Marcus, now going by Mik3y online, creates the Xnet, an alternative, untraceable Internet, and unwittingly starts a major underground movement. Soon he and the other Xnetters are sabotaging the DHS’s surveillance data, but they have to come up with increasingly measures to avoid being identified. In the midst of all this, Marcus meets Ange, another Xnetter who is just as smart and passionate as he is, and the two fall in love. When Marcus discovers that his friend Darryl, who never returned after their initial detention by the DHS, is alive and in custody on Treasure Island (now “Gitmo by the Bay”), he decides to take drastic measures—including telling adults the truth.

Critical Evaluation

A suspenseful mood; timely, thought-provoking themes; and excellent characterization combine to make Little Brother a riveting read. The chilling mood is set as soon as Marcus and his friends get inside the DHS’s detention truck. The agents talk and laugh among themselves while the prisoners are uncomfortable and terrified. The sense the Marcus is always just one false move away from getting caught and disappearing, perhaps forever, keeps the pages turning.

Doctorow takes the interesting step of including long—sometimes pages-long—asides about computer science and hacker technology. These are almost always surprisingly interesting and clearly explained; there was only one such passage that I couldn’t make sense of. Doctorow is also unapologetically didactic when it comes to ideology. Nevertheless, the themes of exchanging freedom for security and the ethics of civil disobedience are food for thought and discussion.

Marcus is a charming narrator and exceptionally fully-realized character. His voice is authentically teenage and geeky, with occasional lapses into Internet-speak (such as “teh suck” for “unpleasant”). He is very smart and sometimes arrogant about it, but he’s not above acknowledging when other people are better at something than he is. He is passionate and committed to his cause, but also scared for his own safety and leery of endangering others. His feelings for Ange and the development of their relationship are believable. Although the sex is not essential to the plot, it is realistic and sensitively handled. Ange and Marcus’s other friends are also well-drawn. The only disappointing character is the dad, who becomes increasingly irrational in his defense of the DHS. From what we know of the dad’s character and background (including his profession—librarian) his behavior rings false.

Curriculum Ties: Government--Bill of Rights, civil liberties

Booktalking Ideas
Explain how Marcus uses pebbles in his shoes to evade the gait-recognition cameras.
Read Marcus's initial interrogation in the DHS truck.

Challenge Issues: Sexual content, language
In the defense file, I will include my library's selection policy, ALA's Library Bill of Rights, ALA's guidelines on free access to libraries for minors (http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/freeaccesslibraries.cfm), and ALA's strategies and tips for dealing with challenges to library materials (http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/copingwithchallenges/strategiestips/index.cfm). I will also include my library's reconsideration form, in case challenges to this book cannot be defused with "tea and sympathy." I will include reviews from Library Media Connection (mixed; objects to sexual content), VOYA (positive), Kirkus Reviews (positive), and Booklist (positive; recommends for use in classroom discussions).

About the Author
Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at Open University (UK) and Scholar in Virtual Residence at the University of Waterloo (Canada); in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

His novels have been translated into dozens of languages and are published by Tor Books and HarperCollins UK and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His New York Times Bestseller LITTLE BROTHER was published in May 2008, a followup young adult novel called FOR THE WIN was published in 2010. His latest short story collection is WITH A LITTLE HELP, available in paperback, ebook, audiobook and limited edition hardcover. In 2011, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called CONTEXT: FURTHER SELECTED ESSAYS ON PRODUCTIVITY, CREATIVITY, PARENTING, AND POLITICS IN THE 21ST CENTURY (with an introduction by Tim O'Reilly) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called CORY DOCTOROW'S FUTURISTIC TALES OF THE HERE AND NOW. His latest adult novel is MAKERS, published by Tor Books/HarperCollins UK in October, 2009. THE GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW, a PM Press Outspoken Authors chapbook, was also published in 2011.

He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, the Organization for Transformative Works, the Annenberg Center for the Study of Online Communities, the Clarion Foundation and The Glenn Gould Foundation.

http://craphound.com/bio.php

Why is this title included?
Little Brother is on many best-of lists, including Amazon Editors' Picks: Top 10 Books, 2008; Booklist Best Books for Young Adults, 2009; Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books, 2008; School Library Journal Best Books, 2008; and YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, 2009.