Anything by Frances Hardinge. She’s an extremely good writer and although she’s classified as “Young Adult”, she deserves a far wider audience. She writes fantasy and is a superb world builder with a lovely sense of humor and an amazing ability to subvert your expectations. No sex at all.
When a new title come out, my daughter and I fight over who gets to read it first. We’ve been doing this since she was 10 and she’s now 22.
I had a similar experience at age 10. I was reading jaws…and had some questions about terminology I didnt understand. Parents and family laughed, I didn’t get an answer.
But…I was allowed to read whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted. There were no restrictions. And I think that’s good. Anything far too inappropriate wouldn’t have been of interest to me.
Yeah, I’m with you. Just not entirely sure how much. I’m okay with her reading some sexual content now, I’d just like it to be moderarely less creepy.
I think one huge difference between when we were kids and having such questions and kids today is that “answers” to those questions are far more readily found on the interwebz . . . and there’s no guarantee just what “answers” they’re going to get when they try to look for it.
In our day, if it wasn’t in a book we could find, we had to rely on people to provide those answers . . . and those answers were generally far less damaging in their consequences.
My kid finished this. It is a mess of interwoven fairytales, riddles, espionage, books-within-books, possible time travel?
I asked my kid if she had any questions, and she was like, “how did the girl have a baby?”
So it’s probably time to have the talk. lol.
Just finished Scythe by Neal; the first book of his Arc of the Scythe trilogy. Just like Unwind, it’s futuristic. The premise here is that the “aging gene” is essentially figured out, so people can “turn” and become a younger version of themselves–so death is not a “thing”.
Furthermore, there is an AI being called The Thunderhead (in fact, that’s covered more in the second book; but think going from “the cloud” to a “thunderhead” meteorologically) that basically controls things.
While there are some “gaps” in the overall set up reading it from an older adult perspective, the scenario and plot are very engaging with the teen perspective and provides a ton of references to discuss what’s going on in the story and how to process the “real world”.
The curious incident of the dog in the night time.
Book of eathsea, which is more kids, but lends itself to other leguin.
Pratchett (I got my kid wee free men, but I dont know what teens would start with)
Vonnegut-- sirens of titan, others.
Mayyybe zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance for a borderline real philosophy book.
Mayyyybe a very light poetry anthology, like Pinsky’s “Americans’ favorite poems” or some Mary Oliver.