The book starts off with Ender getting his monitor removed. Many people thought it was unfair because he had his monitor on the back of his neck since the day he was born all the way up until he was six. The average kid got it off when they turned three, but not Ender. He had it on the longest out of all them. Everyone was jealous that the government kept it on him longer, because they all thought that the government was more interested in him and his actions. And that was true. Ender was a very brilliant boy for his age, and thought about everything strategically and organized. He was also teased in school about being a “Third”. The law was that each family was allowed to have two children, and Ender’s family, have three. The International Fleet allowed them to do this because in the past, they thought that Peter, Ender’s older brother, was in hope of becoming the next commander of the fleet to defeat the buggers, but he was soon released because of his violence. So, they allowed his family to have one more child, one that would hopefully one day become a commander. Ender’s sister, Valentine, is the only person Ender loves being around. He loves her because she takes care of him, and defends him when Peter makes fun of Ender or tries to hurt him.
When Ender then gets his monitor removed in the health room, Stilson follows him. He wanted to fight him. Stilson pushes Ender around, and Stilson tells him, “Now no one can come to your rescue when you need it. No one can watch you no more. Now were fighting, just you and me, Wiggin.” When Stilson starts to knock Ender to the ground, Ender pushes him down first, and starts to punch and kick him. When Stilson is bleeding like crazy, Ender keeps at bashing at him.
Soon after this fight, Colonel Graff and Major Anderson come to Ender’s home. At first they ask him even after Stilson was obviously hurt, why Ender still stomped at him. And Ender told them, “I did that so he would leave me alone. I kicked him over and over to win that battle, and every single one after that.” They then offer him a spot in Battle School, where Ender can learn to become a skilled soldier, or maybe even a commander, to fight the buggers in space. He accepts, and soon goes off on his way.
In Battle school, he and many of the other boys are considered a “launchie”, and he first starts off in the Salamander Army. In the salamander army, he meets a lot of people, who he wants to befriend. But Colonel Graff always leaves him to be isolated from the others, and he is left friendless for that moment in time. In the Salamander Army, there is Bonzo, the leader of the army, who he clashes with always, Bean, his best friend, Alai, Bernard, and Petra, the only girl in the army.

The movie starts out the same way, with showing Ender playing a game against Stilson on their desks. He tells Ender that he cheated with each time he won, and kept on challenging a re-matches. After too much times, with being the mellow and quiet person Ender is, he denies. After class time, Ender gets his Monitor removed. Later, Stilson and his boys meet him in the hall on his way back from the health room. They shove him into an empty classroom where they threaten to beat him up. They call him names and shove him around, until Ender starts to knock Stilson to the ground. As he is doing this, he kicks Stilson in the face and body. When Stilson is obviously bleeding and hurt, Ender keeps kicking him anyway. He then walks away from the fight, to never be bothered by them again. Little does Ender know that even though his monitor was removed, Colonel Graff and Major Anderson could still see him. And they watched the whole fight. They then came to Ender’s home to speak with Ender. They offered him a spot in battle school, where he will then be isolated from the others, so Graff could train him to become amazing.



Ender’s character in the movie was way different than the character in the book. In the book, Ender seemed more subtle, while in the movie, he was way more violent, and intense. In the movie, it was cool to see what was actually going on in the book, and how everything looked. I say this because in the book, I had a hard time visualizing most of the parts, because a lot was going on all at once.

Some things they did differently in the movie that was in the book was in the beginning when Ender beat up Stilson, he wasn’t bleeding as badly as the book said, they didn’t show the fight on the way up to Battle school, when Ender broke Bernard’s arm, they didn’t show the Demosthenes and Locke part when Peter and Valentine tried to get up to Ender, and didn’t show the part when Peter told his little brother that he loved him. A part that they changed and tweaked was when Ender was playing the Mind Game, and instead of showing Peter in the mirror in the tower like it said in the book, it showed Valentine.