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Moral Issue stories

Driven largely by one single issue

Blue Moon

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.

Moral Issue, Coping with

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.

War, Historical, Thought-provoking, Growing-Up, Moral Issue, Friendship

Dear Nobody

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.

Moral Issue, Coping with

Escape From Genopolis

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.

Moral Issue, Adventure, Thought-provoking, SciFi

The House of the Scorpion

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.

Moral Issue, Growing-Up, SciFi

The L-Shaped Room

Style:  Good

Attitude:  Take Care

Jane is pregnant by an actor with whom she had a brief holiday affair.

Moral Issue, Coping with

A Map of Nowhere

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.

Moral Issue, Gritty

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.

Moral Issue, Adventure, Thought-provoking, SciFi

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.

Moral Issue, Adventure, Thought-provoking, SciFi

To Kill A Mockingbird

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.

Moral Issue, Growing-Up, Classic

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)

Moral Issue, Growing-Up