# Flowers for Algernon

**Author:** Daniel Keyes
**Lexile:** 910L
**Grade range:** Grades 8–11
**Age range:** 13–18
**First published:** 1966
**Page count:** 311
**Genre:** Literary Fiction
**ISBN-13:** `9780156030083`
**ISBN-10:** `0156030089`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/flowers-for-algernon
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Charlie Gordon, a man with an intellectual disability, undergoes an experimental surgery that triples his IQ — the same procedure that made the lab mouse Algernon a genius. Told through Charlie's own progress reports, the novel follows his rise to brilliance and the loneliness it brings, then the dawning realization that the effect is not permanent. A staple of grades 8-11 for its first-person voice and its questions about intelligence, dignity, and what it means to be treated as fully human.

## Themes

- identity
- intelligence
- disability
- friendship
- ethics

## Content notes

- mistreatment of disabled people
- mature themes

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