Despite their scarcity, science fiction books are highly sought after by elementary school students.

I got interested in SF because the librarian in my elementary was a SF lover. There were racks of paperbacks that I gobbled up and it’s stuck with me for decades since. It makes me sad to think that kids don’t have the same chance I did to get interested at an early age in the most imaginative genre of fiction. We all need to do our part to pass it on.

What are your suggestions for getting young people interested in science fiction?

A few I remember from that time:

Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series

Heinlein’s juveniles like Podkayne of Mars and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

McCaffery’s Dragonriders of Pern

Niven’s Known Space books

  • @De_Narm
    1•1 year ago

    I’m just guessing here, but it is probably easier to get kids into Fantasy. Tolkien was great then and it is just as great now to get into Fantasy. SciFi on the other hand is always somewhat grounded in the technology of its time. While I really like this, I do think to get into the genre you need something more recent and therefore more grounded in tech you know, which means libraries would have to swap their inventory more often. I’d imagine it’s really off-putting for a kid if their futuristic novel suddenly has an CTR display which they may have not even seen before.