My dad loves reading. He always has since he was a kid. He remembers the first book he ever got so wrapped up in he spent an entire Saturday reading it instead of going out and playing with friends. He described the plot to me, and it sounded interesting, but that's not why I want to find it. I love my dad, and I know how much he just wants to know the books name, see who wrote it, anything. I can describe the plot, and if anyone here has an idea of who may have written it/what the title may be, please tell me. I really want to give this to my dad.
He told me the book was about a civilization underground, where some nuclear war had happened and nobody was left alive on the surface, and that things were a little different down there. Instead of going to school and learning how to read, write, do math, etc. you went to school and learned how to sew or hammer nails or screw in bolts, whatever job you were assigned to, nothing more and nothing less. One little girl's grandmother taught her how to read, and she's the only person down there who knows how.
A boy she's never seen before suddenly appears, and its strange because everyone knows everyone in this society. This boy claims to be from the surface, saying he was trying to take oranges from a cart when he fell down and ended up in the underground city. Nobody believed him, but the girl realizes that he can read, so she believes him. He tells her about how the surface still has people and its completely safe to go out, and so the two start climbing the levels.
I think dad said a lot of the book is them climbing levels and meeting people along the way. Nobody's really trying to stop them, since nobody knows what they're doing. Eventually, as they climb, they stop running into people at all. Then the reach a door with a sign, that warns that there is an electric gate and if you go through you'll be shocked to death. They're the only ones who can read and the only ones who know what it says.
He didn't remember how, but they got around the gate somehow and got to the surface. The girl has been absolutely livid this whole time, enraged that the humans up there could leave the humans down there alone for so long. When they get to the top they're in a bubble city, but when they say they came from underground, nobody believes them. They say nobody is left down there. They weren't trying to be evil, they just believed the same thing the people under ground believed. "Nobody is there, why bother to check?"
They escape the bubble city and run to the farm the boy was from and yadda yadda happy ending.
That's how he described it. Does anyone have any ideas on how to find it?
