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Introducing Kids to Science Fiction with John Christopher’s Tripods Series

By Daily Fig Staff

First published nearly 50 years ago, The Tripods series remains one of the very best introductions to young adult science fiction literature.

“Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world,” mused beloved author Ray Bradbury. “It’s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself.” The deeply creative world of science fiction literature first becomes accessible to children when they turn nine or ten years old. The Tripods (public library) series of books by John Christopher is intensively captivating and easy to read — perfect for introducing kids ages 9-13 to science fiction.

The books center around the tripods — giant, sinister machines with three legs that rule the Earth. By installing a cap on each adult’s head, they’re able to control the entire human race through mind control. Everyone, that is, except for a small group of holdouts that quietly wage war on the tripods in the hopes that the planet will one day be free again. The renegades concentrate on recruiting preteens who haven’t yet been “capped” and who are open to new ideas. Kids create pockets of resistance in this world of brainwashed adults controlled by an evil alien force.

If the premise sounds rebellious and anti-authoritarian, that’s because it is. In an interview, author Sam Youd (whose pen name was John Christopher) suggested that the series appeals to pubescent readers precisely because they themselves view the world suspiciously.

I think the successful children’s books are those which appeal to something at a deeper level which the child doesn’t really quite work out. Now in The White Mountains, the whole thing is that at puberty people are brainwashed. The whole future of mankind rests in the hands of the young, the age group for which I’m writing. I think that kids at that age – around 12 or 13 – probably do look at the adults around them resentfully and think of them as hidebound and prejudiced. It’s important for children to have stories which put them in the driving seat.

The series is a collection of four books: When the Tripods Came (prequel — 1988), The White Mountains (1967), The City of Gold and Lead (1967), and The Pool of Fire (1968). Readers may want to start with the prequel since it lays the groundwork for the original series.

Covers of the White Mountains — Covers from different editions of The White Mountains

Individuality and free will are strong themes throughout the books. The capped adults have lost all traces of the personality traits that made them unique human beings. Their behavior is flat and tempered, something that terrifies the freethinking narrators of the books.

The Head Man droned on. He was thin and anxious, white-faced and white-haired (what there was of it), due for retirement at the end of the school year. I wondered about being like him, too — just about able to cope under normal conditions, without things like Tripping to contend with.

What I was suddenly aware of was the importance of their being whatever each of them was — cocky and contemptuous, or bothered and beaten — as long as it was something they’d come to in their own way: the importance of being human, in fact. The peace and harmony Uncle Ian and the others claimed to be handing out in fact was death, because without being yourself, an individual, you weren’t really alive.

Readers discover later in the series that the tripods are piloted by aliens who live in dome-covered cites. Soon after arriving on Earth and enslaving everyone, the alien species returned the human race to a preindustrial way of living — one entirely devoid of modern technology. The holdouts living in the mountains make plans to destroy the tripods and free the human race.

There are viewing points where one can look out from the side of the mountain. Sometimes I go to one of these and stare down into the green sunlit valley far below. I can see villages, tiny fields, roads, the pinhead specks of cattle. Life looks warm there, and easy compared with the harshness of rock and ice by which we are surrounded. But I do not envy the valley people their ease.

For it is not quite true to say that we have no luxuries. We have two: freedom, and hope. We live among men whose minds are their own, who do not accept the dominion of the Tripods and who, having endured in patience for long enough, are even now preparing to carry the war to the enemy.

It’s worth noting that the series has been rightfully criticised for its notable absence of female characters as well as some subtle racist references. As one Slate editor put it, “to have found that one of my favorite childhood books was sexist in this casual, negligent way was alarming.” But for parents and readers who can look past these shortcomings, The Tripods series provides nail-biting entertainment. This is science fiction at its best.

The Star Wars and Star Trek franchises get all the publicity, but readers willing to dig a little deeper will discover a treasure trove of wonderful science fiction literature for kids and young adults. First published nearly 50 years ago, The Tripods series has stood the test of time. It remains one of the very best introductions to the world of young adult science fiction literature. Complement with Hoot by Carl Hiaasen, a novel for young adults about middle school students standing up for what they believe in.

Finding Winnie: The Origin Story of the Bear that Inspired Winnie the Pooh

By Daily Fig Staff

“Every so often, you become aware that a fictional story has an equally beautiful, real and true story behind it.”

“You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you,” said Winnie the Pooh in A.A. Milne’s classic best-selling book Winnie-the-Pooh. “You have to go to them sometimes.” Now, thanks to author Lindsay Mattick and illustrator Sophie Blackall, we know where the inspiration for Milne’s historic story came from. Finding Winnie (public library) tells the true story of the actual bear that inspired the character of Winnie the Pooh. And what a story it is!

The children’s book follows Mattick’s great-grandfather, Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian called to serve in World War I. While traveling across Canada with the other soldiers, he meets a trapper sitting with a cub — the trapper had killed the cub’s mother. Harry pays $20 for the bear. So begins his incredible journey with Winnie, who is named after Harry’s hometown of Winnipeg.

It’s not every day that you see a bear cub at a train station. ‘That bear has lost its mother,’ he thought, ‘and that man must be the trapper who got her.’

Harry thought for a long time. Then he said to himself, ‘There is something special about that Bear.’ He felt inside his pocket and said, ‘I shouldn’t.’ He paced back and forth and said, ‘I can’t.’ Then his heart made up his mind, and he walked up to the trapper and said, ‘I’ll give you twenty dollars for the bear.’

Initially, the soldiers have their reservations about the bear, but before too long Winnie becomes the mascot of the regiment. She stays with the men in Canada, sails with them across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, and lives with them until they go to the front.

Winnie was in the army now. Harry taught her to stand up straight and hold her head high and turn this way and that, just so! Soon, she was assigned her own post. Even the Colonel agreed that Winnie was a Remarkable Bear. She might have been the best navigator in the whole army.

When the order comes down the line for Harry’s regiment to move to the front and fight the war, Harry has a decision to make. Should he bring Winnie to the front lines, possibly risking her life? Or should he find a new, safe place for her to live? Eventually Harry decides that Winnie should live in the London Zoo.

It was winter when the order came: The time had come to fight. Winnie posed proudly with the men for pictures to send home to their families.

Harry thought for a long time. His head argued one way and then the other. But his heart made up his mind.

He went to Winnie and said in a serious way, ‘There’s somewhere we need to go.’ Winnie brushed the mud off her nose and nuzzled in close.

It’s at the London Zoo that Winnie meets Christopher Robin. Christopher’s father, A.A. Milne, eventually wrote the book Winnie-the-Pooh. The back of the book contains several photographs of Harry and Christopher with Winnie.

Christopher Robin would visit Winnie at the zoo, and then he would take his stuffed animal on all sorts of adventures in the wood behind his home. His father, Alan Alexander Milne, wrote books all about them. Harry’s Winnie became Winnie-the-Pooh — and there has never been a more beloved bear.

According to an interview, Mattick wrote Finding Winnie to share her family’s story. “Writing the story through a picture book helps bring it to a larger audience and bring it to a lot of children who aren’t familiar with this story — that’s my role in the family story.” She also shared some thoughts on why the story is important.

Every so often, you become aware that a fictional story has an equally beautiful, real and true story behind it — and that doesn’t happen every day. I think that the part of this story that always spoke the most to me was the fact that when Harry made that decision [over] 100 years ago to buy Winnie, to buy a bear cub because he loved animals and because he felt it would bring some joy to his regiment, he just had no idea that this very simple act was going to have this massive unexpected ripple effect.

Finding Winnie is an extraordinary account of a remarkable act of kindness — one that eventually influenced A.A. Milne. Winnie-the-Pooh, of course, has gone on to profoundly influence children around the world for generations. It goes to show that even simple acts of kindness can have a big impact. Complement with Jan Brett’s Mossy and her drawing advice.

Steve Wozniak’s Advice for Technical Prodigies

By Daily Fig Staff

“The world needs inventors — great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach.”

In many ways, Steve Wozniak needs no introduction. Apple’s cofounder was only 26 years old when he single-handedly designed and developed the Apple 1 computer, the product that launched Apple and started the personal computer revolution. In iWoz (public library), Wozniak provides insight into his younger years, his career, and his personal philosophy on life. He also provides valuable advice for young adults who have aspirations of following in his footsteps.

Wozniak has always been a strong advocate for children and a big supporter of public education. “If I couldn’t have been an engineer,” he says in iWoz, “I would’ve been a teacher. I believed, truly believed, that education was important. I remember my father telling me way back then that it was education that would lift me up to where I wanted to go in life, that it could lift people up in values.” According to Wired, Wozniak did work for a time as a teacher in Los Gatos through an unconventional arrangement with the school system.

With the publication of iWoz, he makes another contribution to children by providing advice to those hoping to make a dent in the world — advice that primarily concerns how to go about inventing something new. It’s a must read for young adults and parents of children interested in science and technology.

I’d like to give advice, for what it’s worth, to kids out there who are like I was. Kids who feel they’re outside the norm. Kids who feel it in themselves to design things, invent things, engineer things. Change the way people do things.

My advice has to do with what you do when you find yourself sitting there with ideas in your head and a desire to build them. But you’re young. You have no money. All you have is the stuff in your brain. And you think it’s good stuff, those ideas you have in your brain. Those ideas are what drive you, they’re all you think about.

But there’s a big difference between just thinking about inventing something and doing it. So how do you do it? How do you actually set about changing the world?

Steve Wozniak (Photograph: OnInnovation)

Believe in yourself

To invent anything new, Wozniak says that individuals need to believe in themselves and keep an open mind about just about everything.

First you need to believe in yourself. Don’t waver. There will be people — and I’m talking about the vast majority of people, practically everybody you’ll ever meet — who just think in black-and-white terms. Most people see things the way the media sees them or the way their friends see them, and they think if they’re right, everyone else is wrong. So a new idea — a revolutionary new product or product feature — won’t be understandable to most people because they see things so black and white. Maybe they don’t get it because they can’t imagine it, or maybe they don’t get it because someone else has already told them what’s useful or good, and what they heard doesn’t include your idea.

Don’t let these people bring you down. Remember that they’re just taking the point of view that matches whatever the popular cultural view of the moment is. They only know what they’re exposed to. It’s a type of prejudice, actually, a type of prejudice that is absolutely against the spirit of invention.

Wozniak at thirteen showing off his science-fair-winning Adder/Subtractor — Wozniak at thirteen showing off his science-fair-winning adder and subtractor

But the world isn’t black and white. It’s gray scale. As an inventor, you have to see things in gray scale. You need to be open. You can’t follow the crowd. Forget the crowd. And you need the kind of objectivity that makes you forget everything you’ve heard, clear the table, and do a factual study like a scientist would. You don’t want to jump to conclusions, take a position too quickly, and then search for as much material as you can to support your side. Who wants to waste time supporting a bad idea? It’s not worth it, that way of being stuck in your ego. You don’t want to just come up with any excuse to support your way.

Engineers have an easier time than most people seeing and accepting the gray-scale nature of the world. That’s because they already live in a gray-scale world, knowing what it is to have a hunch or a vision about what can be, even though it doesn’t exist yet. Plus, they’re able to calculate solutions that have partial values — in between all and none.

The only way to come up with something new — something world-changing — is to think outside the constraints everyone else has. You have to think outside of the artificial limits everyone else has already set. You have to live in the gray-scale world, not the black-and-white one, if you’re going to come up with something no one has thought of before.

Be an artist

Wozniak contends that inventors should view their projects in much the same way as artists view their paintings.

Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me — they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone — best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it!

Why do I say engineers are like artists? Engineers often strive to do things more perfectly than even they think is possible. Every tiny part or line of code has to have a reason, and the approach has to be direct, short, and fast. We build upon and build upon and build upon, just like a painter would with colors on a paintbrush or a composer would with musical notes. And it’s this reach for perfection — this striving to put everything together so perfectly, in a way no one has done before — that makes an engineer or anyone else a true artist.

Work alone

To create new and original works, Wozniak advises individuals to work by themselves, even if it means working long hours in the evening after school or work.

If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone.

When you’re working for a large, structured company, there’s much less leeway to turn clever ideas into revolutionary new products or product features by yourself. Money is, unfortunately, a god in our society, and those who finance your efforts are businesspeople with lots of experience at organizing contracts that define who owns what and what you do on your own.

But you probably have little business experience, know-how, or acumen, and it’ll be hard to protect your work or deal with all that corporate nonsense. I mean, those who provide the funding and tools and environment are often perceived as taking the credit for inventions. If you’re young inventor who wants to change the world, a corporate environment is the wrong place for you.

You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team. That means you’re probably going to have to do what I did. Do your projects as moonlighting, with limited money and limited resources. But man, it’ll be worth it in the end. It’ll be worth it if this is really, truly what you want to do — invent things. If you want to invent things that can change the world, and not just work at a corporation working on other people’s inventions, you’re going to have to work on your own projects.

When you’re working as your own boss, making decisions about what you’re going to build and how you’re going to go about it, making trade-offs as to features and qualities, it becomes a part of you. Like a child you love and want to support. You have huge motivation to create the best possible inventions — and you care about them with a passion you could never feel about an invention someone else ordered you to come up with.

Stay the course

It’s important to be persistent. Wozniak says that inventors need to trust themselves even in the face of overwhelming opposition.

It’s so easy to doubt yourself, and it’s especially easy to doubt yourself when what you’re working on is at odds with everyone in the world who thinks they know the right way to do things. Sometimes you can’t prove whether you’re right or wrong. Only time can tell that. But if you believe in your own power to objectively reason, that’s a key to happiness. And a key confidence. Another key I found to happiness was to realize that I didn’t have to disagree with someone and let it get all intense. If you believe in your own power to reason, you can just relax. You don’t have to feel the pressure to set out and convince anyone. So don’t sweat it! You have to trust your own designs, your own intuition, and your own understanding of what your invention needs to be.

I hope you’ll be as lucky as I am. The world needs inventors — great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach. And it’ll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

iWoz is required reading for anyone interested in technology. For young adults who have hopes and dreams of creating new technology, Wozniak’s timeless advice is invaluable. Complement with Ed Catmull’s wisdom on embracing failure and Linda Liukas’ advice on nurturing your child’s technical imagination.