Flashback (Science Fiction) (Pageturners)

"You don't need a weapon," the creature insisted. "You should know that violence solves nothing." "Oh, spare me!" Joe objected. "Violence solves quite a lot of things as your need to be rescued violently by us proves! It is rather that violence is not necessarily the BEST way to solve things when there is a peaceful alternative available!" "Yes, I see your point," the creature admitted. OK, I made up that last part, but I wish Joe HAD given such a response to this, mercifully, the sole example of PC idiocy in this book. Saddleback Educational Publishing has come up with a brilliant concept for solving a very serious problem: the great decline in reading among today's students. Their solution? Make assigned reading materials exciting! Their Pageturners books are short novels, designed to entice even the least motivated students into reading. This confronts both of the major problems with more traditional readers: if they are not mind-numbingly dull, they are excruciatingly didactic, cramming some important "teachings" whether moral, religious, or (these days) politically correct down the throats of children so hard as to turn them off of reading for good. Joe Stebbins wants no part of Holly Atchison. He had his fill of nosy, dishonest reporters three years ago when he first told his story of being kidnapped by aliens, but Holly has a trump card. Her mother claims to have been kidnapped the very same night from the very same place! An SF story with lots of thrills and lots of twists before the end! Plus, for what they are intended to be, reading textbooks, they are wonderful. The fact that students who learn to read better and to love reading from these books may soon find them skimpy fare for pleasure reading is not entirely bad, assuming their teachers quickly move them on to bigger and better things in the school library or the bookstore if necessary. Other science fiction Pageturners: Bugged! (Pageturners), Escape from Earth (Pageturners), Murray's Nightmare (Pageturners), and Under Siege (Pageturners).