Little Brother

Bibliographic Information: Doctorow, C. (2008). Little brother. New York: Tor Teen. ISBN: 978-0765323118

Plot Summary: Marcus Yallow is just your average high-school kid, which makes him “one of the most surveilled people in the world.” This is because he attends a high school where gait-recognition cameras are installed, and students are required to use Schoolbooks—laptop computers that log every keystroke, detect suspicious keywords, and bombard students with advertisements. But it doesn’t take long for Marcus, aka “w1n5t0n”, to crack the Schoolbook’s firewall and install hidden software so that he can surf the net privately during school, often playing the-best-game-of-all-time: Harajuku Fun Madness. He’s even devised a way to fool the gait-recognition cameras by putting pebbles in his shoes, making him walk in random movements.

            Marcus’s interests in hacking are for pleasure, and privacy. He is a pro at outsmarting even the most advanced computer technology. Until one day, he and his friends go out on scavenger hunt (the latest quest on Harajuku Fun Madness) in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, and a terrorist attack occurs, destroying the Bay Bridge, and BART train system. Marcus and his friends are seized by the Department of Homeland Security in the onslaught of chaos, and subjected to torture and interrogation for looking suspicious. When they are falsely accused of being terrorists, and finally released, Marcus feels that his freedoms and privacy have been violated, and his safety has been compromised for life.

When he finds a chip installed in his laptop at home, he realizes he is in for a long ride of fighting for his freedoms. Under the new moniker of M1k3y, Marcus creates the Xnet—a network that unites other rebellious teens to organize the jamming of the DHS’s transportation tracking system, used to detect suspicious activity among San Francisco’s citizens. With help from his Xnet followers and parents, Marcus’s story is revealed to the public, but not without a few obstacles. Luckily, he is willing to fight for his freedoms and the Bill of Rights.

Critical Evaluation: Doctorow’s vision of a near dystopian future is backed up with intricate knowledge about the hacking world, instilling reader’s with a sense of autonomy and control, that may seem to be diminishing every day: airports now use face recognition cameras, passports contain RFID chips that can track where you travel, Facebook publishes your whereabouts and advertises things you may have just Googled. Our sense of privacy in the age of Information is dwindling, and this book explores some of the dangers that might surface. Told though the eyes of a rebellious and smart teen, and available for free in multiple formats thanks to a Creative Commons license, Little Brother is a fresh call-to-arms for the next generation, pleading that we all take American civil rights seriously, and won’t let technology work against us.

Reader’s Annotation: Marcus is mistakenly arrested as a terrorist who attacked the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. He and his friends must wage a war on the DHS to win back their freedom.

Author Information: Gale’s Contemporary Authors Online states that “Cory Doctorow writes science fiction and nonfiction about technology, both of which he was exposed to at an early age by his father, a math and computer science teacher. Doctorow noted on his Web site that he learned to use a keyboard before he learned cursive writing. He began selling his short fiction at seventeen and has had continued success with his stories.

Genre: Science Fiction

Subjects: Civil Rights, Computer hackers, Counterculture, Terrorism, Privacy

Curriculum Ties: Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, and Freedom

Booktalking Ideas: Make connections between the book and terrorist attacks on the United States, 9/11 and the recent Boston Bombings. Ask teens if they are willing to give up their freedoms for “safety”, and how this connects with the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Reading Level/Interest Age: 16+

Challenge Issues/Defense: Due to mild language, sexuality, and depictions of terrorism and revolution, this book may be challenged. If so, refer to:

1.     The San Francisco Public Library Collection Development Policy, Selection Criteria, and Teen Collection documents.

2.     The California Department of Education District Selection Policies, Reading Lists, and Resources for Recommended Literature: Pre-K-12.

3.     A hard copy of the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights.

4.     Mixed book reviews from School Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publisher’s Weekly.

5.     Book selection rationale.

6.     If necessary, The San Francisco Public Library’s Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials Form.

Reason for Selection: Few science fiction novels feel so plausible and relavent as this. Tech-savvy teens will love all of the hacking references.