Our Good Reads for Kids series continues with this young adult sci-fi Cinderella tale, Cinder by Marissa Meyer. This recommended read comes to us from Katherine Farmer, Coordinator of Racers Children's Preview Collection at Murray State University.
What would life be like if you couldn’t remember anything before the age of 11? What is life like when you are different from those around you? How do you feel when others, even your own family, like to blame you for everything that happens? How far would you go to save the one person in your family who truly loves you?
These questions and more are answered in the original retelling of the Cinderella story in the novel Cinder by debut author Marissa Meyer.
Cinder lives in post World War IV New Beijing with her evil stepmother and two stepsisters. She supports the family through her talent as the best mechanic of New Beijing in a small shop in the center of the city market. Cinder’s life is not without complications. Her stepmother and one of her stepsisters despise her and blame every problem on her including the death of her father and her other stepsister’s illness. If that is not complicated enough, Cinder is also a cyborg, part human and part robot, who are considered second class citizens. So she hides that fact as she develops a new friendship and possible romance with the prince who is being pursued by the queen of the mind-controlling Lunars, a colony of evolved humans on the moon.
How does Cinder’s stepmother complicate her life due to her stepsister’s illness? Can she keep her secret from the prince? Is she willing to risk everything to save those she loves? Will she be the cause of an intergalactic war? To find out more, read Marissa Meyer’s fast paced and tension filled novel Cinder.