Tron Legacy

Author:  Adapted by Alice Alfonsi

Genre:  Moden Fantasy and science Fiction, Chapter Book

Tron is about a guy whose father, Kevin Flynn, disappeared when he was a little boy, Sam Flynn, around age 7.  His father worked for a company that makes computer games and was a very successful computer programmer.  Sam remembers his father would tell him computer stories of the digital world of computer games and then go off to work.  One day he just disappeared and did not return after he left for work.  For the next 20 years Sam was filled with resentment towards his father’s company, with which his father had left him as the major shareholder of so he had plenty of money to live on.  On the anniversary of his father’s disappearance, Sam would play some type of prank on the company.  One of Kevin’s companions who helped raise Sam after Kevin disappeared received a page number on his pager.  The number was an arcade his father owned which had been out of business for 20 years.  Sam thought this might be a sign that his father was alive so he went to the abandoned arcade to look for clues.  Sam found a secret lab under the old digital game “Tron.”  There he was whisked into the digital world.  There were programs (which are what digital people are called) trying to kill him there and take over the world outside of the digital world.  He found his father and they stopped the evil program, Clu, who was trying to take over the world and end the human race.

This book may take a little while to read.  I would read one chapter and ask the students to read the next chapter for homework and discussion the next day.  We would discuss what has happened at the end of each chapter to make sure students were on track.  At the end of the book, I would have the class write a story finishing this prompt.  “One day I was at the computer playing my favorite computer game when I fell in the computer, then… “  They would draw a picture to share with the class about what the digital world they fell into looked like.  This story could relate to computer classes when studying modern technology.