Moral Issue stories
Driven largely by one single issue
Style: Average
Attitude: Take Care → Positive
Mia and her boyfriend go too far in the fields one day and Mia finds that she is pregnant.
Abortion treated as matter of fact by everyone except the mother-to-be.
Coping with, Moral Issue
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Style: Good
Attitude: Positive
Young Bruno is upset when his family is uprooted from their comfortable Berlin townhouse and forced to live in the featureless Outwith at the insistence of his soldier father's chief The Fury.
A moving look at the horrors of Auschwitz through the eyes of an innocent young German boy, the son of the camp commandant. No explicit violence but the final moments are quite tragic. May be suitable for younger readers in company with an older reader who can explain what's happening if needed.
Friendship, Growing-Up, Historical, Moral Issue, Thought-provoking, War
Style: Average
Attitude: Take Care
Helen becomes pregnant with her boyfriend's baby and as she is so young and distraught she does not know whom to turn to.
Coping with, Moral Issue
Style: Average
Attitude: Unobjectionable
Usha and Arlo meet in the gladiatorial Circus, she as a recaptured slave who must fight for her life, he as a Natural who's been raised among citizens and who is now trying to return to the Regions outside the city to find his family.
A warning story about the dangers of cloning and genetic manipulation.
Adventure, Moral Issue, SciFi, Thought-provoking
Style: Average
Attitude: Take Care
Matt, a child clone of an artificially ancient rich drug baron, has to come to terms with the way the world sees him as he grows up and discovers the truth behind his way of life.
Growing-Up, Moral Issue, SciFi
Style: Average
Attitude: Some Care Needed → Positive
Henry, believing himself loyal to his dead father, initially despises certain other people and their ideals, but later learns that his father is less of a hero than he had thought and that the others deserve better from him.
Positive story about post-war attitudes and opportunities. A slightly tolerant attitude towards divorce and illegitimacy. Generosity and cheerfulness in difficult circumstances.
Family, Growing-Up, Moral Issue
Style: Good
Attitude: Take Care
Jane is pregnant by an actor with whom she had a brief holiday affair.
Coping with, Moral Issue
Style: Weak
Attitude: Unobjectionable
Nick Miller (mid-teenage) is forced by his older brother's motorcycle gang - which he secretly wishes to join - to become friendly with Joseph Fisher, whose family run a small shop out on the fens.
Gritty, Moral Issue
Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever
Style: Average
Attitude: Unobjectionable → Fairly Positive
When Fang is badly injured in a battle with new, fiercer Erasers, the Flock are forced to go to hospital where they are interrogated by the FBI but then taken under the wing of Anne and go to live at her home and go to normal school.
Slow-paced extension to the first book, developing little and establishing few new elements. The older children start to discover relationships with the opposite sex. Iggy finds his real family but they are only interested in the financial possibilities he offers.
Adventure, Moral Issue, SciFi, Thought-provoking
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
Style: Average
Attitude: Positive
Max and the Flock, children with wings, have run away from the School, the lab complex where they spent the first part of their lives locked in cages and experimented on.
Grotesque and disturbing genetic and behavioural experiments on young children with commonly fatal results. Tremendous love and supportiveness between the six children. Max's efforts to make sure she and the others do the right thing. Positive reference to religion. The children's desire to know whether they have parents and who they are. Some thefts by the children in difficult circumstances. Serious violence.
Adventure, Moral Issue, SciFi, Thought-provoking
Style: Classic
Attitude: Positive
To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the deep south of America during the 1930s, a time at which racial prejudice was rife.
Racism and how this is fought by one man in the Deep South.
Classic, Growing-Up, Moral Issue
The Transformation of Jennifer Howard
Style: Average
Attitude: Take Care
18-year-old Jennifer Howard is devastated when her older brother dies of AIDS and after a failed suicide attempt, decides to stay for a while in a Shaker-like Christian Community nearby.
A positive view of a strict Christian community; some ambiguity in the feelings Jennifer has for Wayne; Charles Howard is seeing another woman with his wife's knowledge (but not consent)
Growing-Up, Moral Issue