Young adult/kids' book featuring death of everyone over age 12?

May 26, 2010 11:28 AM

Help me find a book I read as a kid so I can give it as a gift to the kids in my life. Premise, as best I can recall: Everyone over the age of 12 dies of a disease, and so all the kids on earth are in a post-apocalyptic, quasi Lord of the Flies situation. Except they're not on some random island. They're in their own homes, in cities and wherever they live. Children must learn to drive cars. A girl is the protagonist; she's the leader (of her local group?). I vaguely remember conflict and danger but not the details. My copy was paperback, and the cover might've featured the girl standing in front of some ruined looking stuff and scared kids behind her.
posted by ImproviseOrDie to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

Best answer: This is The Girl Who Owned A City. i love this book.
posted by doteatop at 11:34 AM on May 26, 2010 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you so much! God, I love the internet.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 11:39 AM on May 26, 2010

Warning - your warm childhood memories of the book will be permanently damaged if you re-read it now, because as an adult, it will be clear to you that the book is actually a piece of Objectivist propaganda. That said, I wouldn't have too many qualms about giving it to a kid, because more than likely that piece of it will sail completely over their heads.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 11:48 AM on May 26, 2010

Wow, strangely stunned trees. Thanks for the warning. I remember this book very well, too - but not that part of it. Read it when I was about 11. The surgery-out-of-a-book scene is still with me.
posted by Miko at 11:53 AM on May 26, 2010

Yeah, I re-read it a year ago (I'm arguably an adult, at least I'm over 12) and I still enjoyed it.
posted by doteatop at 11:57 AM on May 26, 2010

Is this the same book where this group of neighborhood kids ended up living in the high school building because it provided protection against roving bands of hostile kids with older teenagers as their leaders? I don't remember the main characters but I do remember that all the adults had died.
posted by victoriab at 12:18 PM on May 26, 2010

Nevermind...just read the wiki and it's the same book I'm thinking of :)
posted by victoriab at 12:20 PM on May 26, 2010

Response by poster: strangelystuntedtrees, yes, an Amazon reviewer said the same thing. Of course, as a kid, I didn't pick up on any of that but could see it in retrospect. Still, it's one of the most memorable books of my childhood. (Except for the, uh, title and most of the plot, apparently.) That, and Father's Arcane Daughter.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 12:31 PM on May 26, 2010

I wouldn't worry about the intended political stance - CS Lewis was trying to promote christian thought with his Narnia series, but I never picked up on that as a kid, just loved the story. Authors can't control what you get from their fiction, if the story's any good...
posted by mdn at 12:36 PM on May 26, 2010

I was going to ask this tonight!
posted by melodykramer at 2:55 PM on May 26, 2010

Interestingly, a similar theme crops up in a couple of recent YA novels The Enemy (everyone over 14 dies or is a zombie) and Gone (everyone over 15 vanishes). Something about a world without adults...
posted by featherboa at 3:22 AM on May 27, 2010

This is also the premise of the tv series Jeremiah. It was "loosely based" on a Belgian comic book series, but I've never read it so I don't know how loose. The difference, I think, is that Jeremiah takes place as the first generation of kids are in their mid-20s and having to deal with adult stuff on their own.

Definitely not a kids' show, though (it was on Showtime, after all).
posted by bigdamnnerd at 1:07 PM on May 27, 2010