Ender's Shadow
This is Bean's installment of Orson Scott Card's Ender's saga. It is a great character building book for those who have read Ender's Game and want to know more about Bean and his background. 

Here is the description from the back of the book:

> Welcome to Battleschool.
> 
> Growing up is never easy. But try living on the mean streets as a child begging for food and fighting like a dog with ruthless gangs of starving kids who wouldn't hesitate to pound your skull into pulp for a scrap of apple. If Bean has learned anything on the streets, it's how to survive. And not with fists. He is way too small for that. But with brains.
> 
> Bean is a genius with a magician's ability to zero in on his enemy and exploit his weakness.
> 
> What better quality for a future general to lead the Earth in a final climactic battle against a hostile alien race, known as Buggers. At Battleschool Bean meets and befriends another future commander - Ender Wiggins - perhaps his only true rival.
> 
> Only one problem: for Bean and Ender, the future is now.
Child soldiers, Child soldiers in fiction, Bean (Ficticious Character), Ender Wiggin (Fictitious character), Exceptional children
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American novelist, critic, public speaker, essayist and columnist. He writes in several genres but is known best for science fiction. His novel Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986) both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win both science fiction's top U.S. prizes in consecutive years.