Ender's Game

 Ender's Game is the winner of the Nebula Award (1985) and the Hugo Award (1986) for best science fiction novel.  It's one of the few Nebula and Hugo Award winners I've actually read, which is a little surprising given the number of sci-fi books I've read in my life.  :)  (The others were Dune, Speaker of the Dead, and HP and the Goblet of Fire.)  Ender's Game truly stands the test of time and my personal test of re-readability.

Given my recent obsession with Hunger Games, I was drawing all sorts of parallels between the use of children in war in both these novels.  Orson Scott Card is superb at writing insights into the psychological struggle of protagonists.  This becomes even more important in the various sequels and concurrent novels connected to Ender's story.  Some of the books are entirely about ethics and emotion while others focus on politics or science in a future world.  I admit both the politics and science were sometimes way over my head.  I still don't really understand what an ansible does (something about bridging the space/time continuum and faster than light speed communication) or what a hegemony is (something about a political alliance?).

But there's all sorts of great moments throughout the entire series where you stop and think about what life would be like if what is described were really possible or actually happened (laws on number of children that a family can have, designer babies, maturity vs. age, consequences of destroying an entire alien species, colonization or other planets, etc).  The interesting discussions that can stem from this book and its relatability to young adults is probably why it's one of the books on the English curriculum reading list.