The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov

Today, people's beliefs of Neanderthals have changed immensely. In the past, it was believed that these early humans were not too smart in the membrane, and lived without tools and were basically ignorant.

That belief has changed, and new findings show they were a smart people, and some believe they were humans, at any rate they eventually bred with humans. Neanderthal DNA can be found in homo sapiens today, and some have that look about them. 

These ancient people lived in caves or homes they made with mammoth bones, and were very careful about the way they kept their domiciles. Most could have made the cover of Neanderthal Home and Garden (sorry). They made tools, performed operations, and may have used language and created music.

This book is about a young Neanderthal brought to the future (the future of 1958 when the book was published) and the nurse who learns to love him even though he is an ugly little boy.

No one could say this story shows any signs of political correctness, and some of the words are quite offensive. Ape boy is what the media call him, and he is just a spectacle to be poked at and studied--no one cares that he is a scared little guy except his nurse, who names him Timmie and eventually she loves him dearly.

Ultimately, the company who brought him into the future is ready to send him back where he came from--they want to pull someone else out of time. It doesn't matter to them that he now wears clothes, reads, talks, uses utensils while eating and will be completely lost back in his original home.

It's heartbreaking to think they wouldn't care, but it's believable that corporations and some scientists care for nothing but money and fame, and what's one little boy's life in the shadow of their greatness.

The nurse wants desperately to sneak him out of the building to safety, but she's found out, and so her only recourse, which would be the same as most mothers frantically afraid for their child, is to go back in time with him, and try to keep him safe.

There are many conclusions my mind has created on what happens when they get back and I persist in my belief that she will help him be safe and he will grow to be a great man.

This is a wonderful story and Asimov felt it was one of his best.

Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress

May contain spoilers.
The worst element of Aliens landing on our Earth would be their intent of good or evil. Not everyone views good and evil as absolute, and in the beginning, the intentions of the aliens in this book are difficult to decipher.
The aliens, that land on our world, aren't complete strangers--they are part of our ancestors that somehow broke off and moved to a distant planet far, far away.
They tell a tale of a spore cloud coming our way within one Earth year, and will hit their planet within twenty-five years. The spores are deadly to the aliens and subsequently deadly to humans.
The aliens set up labs with all the top scientist of the world to find a cure for humans and the quasi-humans also.
One aspect of the story that I consider appealing portrays the primary character who's a middle-aged woman. She's a scientist at a leading university with three grown children. She doesn't have a man and doesn't seem to be looking for one. She threw out her alcoholic husband years earlier, and she concentrates on her work and occasionally her grown children.
Books rarely show a woman, moving up in years, worth anyone's scrutiny in this age of youth and beauty, so this is an immense credit to the writer.
As time moves on she becomes depressed when thinking back on the mother that worked too much, and the mother that couldn't find the secret formula to give her children what they needed.
As the book moves on, her regrets become  perceptible, which leads her down the path of anger, bitterness and regret. I recognize this woman since I have felt these same feelings towards my children, and I've spent copious amounts of sleepless nights contemplating my own maternal defects.
I wish in the end that she lost her frustratingly fatalistic perspective, and after learning a large percentage of the population on our planet will live, including her other two children and grandchild (left on earth), that she would have grasped onto happiness for the human race. Maybe, as time moves on and the pain of her loss diminishes, she will find the ample hope that she needs in her life.