On Nita's 15th birthday, her alien guardian Llipel reveals the story of her birth. Llipel and her companion, Llare, landed on Earth and discovered the Institute, a place founded before the last series of wars had killed off the human population. Llipel stumbled into a storeroom, full of thousands of fertilized human-egg cells. A careless word, as interpreted by the computer that maintained the storeroom, started Nita's life. Llare made the same blunder and became guardian to a boy only a little older than Nita. She and Sven are the last humansexcept for the unbornin the world. Together they learn the horrible truth about their ancestors, a race of creatures that destroyed itself by war. Nita and Sven hold in their hands the power to reform humanity or to let it die. This finely crafted work never falters with false resolution; the children don't find any survivors, though they look, and they do not fall in love or react in ways inappropriate to their socialization. An honest and compelling examination of "What if. . . ?" Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up This story of Nita, a girl growing up in an insulated environment where she gradually comes to realize that she might be the last person left on Earth, has conflict and suspense from the beginning. Despite the enclosed set ting, there is absorbing interaction be tween the curious child seeking more knowledge about her origin and her world and the furry alien who acts as her protective guardian. Llipel is well portrayed as an intriguing example of an extraterrestrial species. Nina's tur bulent feelings are vividly depicted; she longs for others of her kind but is strangely repulsed when she first learns from the computer the clinical details of human reproduction. She is also ex tremely puzzled by the changes in her body as she enters puberty, having no peers with whom to discuss or com pare. Then Llipel's mysterious alien companion, who remains concealed in the locked west wing, turns out to be raising another human, a boy. When he and Nita finally get together and find that they are in an embryological insti tute where they were both started as test-tube babies, the plot is propelled along at a faster pace. After a danger ous and courageous trip outside to try to find other survivors, the two teens find the answers they seek as well as a new optimism for the future of humani ty, supplying an appropriate conclusion to both the story and their moral self- questioning. Lyle Blake Smythers, Li brary of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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