Teen dystopia is the big thing right now: The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, and probably a dozen more than I'm missing now that I'm not doing Readers' Advisory for middle schoolers anymore.
When did this get so big? Young Adult was an emerging genre when I was in middle school - there wasn't a lot outside of Chronicles of Narnia and the Alice series (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone wasn't published 'til I was a freshman in high school and, as previously mentioned this week, I didn't jump on that bandwagon for a few years). If you weren't into slice-of-life stuff (like I wasn't), there wasn't a whole lot out there. [Edit: Since I wrote this post 2 years ago, I discovered that Young Adult has been a "thing" for a few decades now. But with that said, most of it was still that "slice of life" stuff that I don't care for, which is probably why I wasn't aware of it in middle school and high school.]
In 1993 a small, quick-to-read book was published that subsequently received the Newberry and may have been the seed of the teen dystopia trend. That book was The Giver by Lois Lowry. In lieu of reiterating the plot, I will post the review I wrote for our genre study at my previous library.
Literary Fiction Book Review - The Giver
Please describe the book you’ve just read by answering the following questions:
Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Pacing: Starts slow, but builds.
Frame/setting: A community in an unspecified place, presumably in the future
Story line: Jonas lives in a perfect world – because it is designed that way. Family units consist of 1 mother, 1 father, and 2 children – one of each gender. At the age of twelve, when Jonas and all his friends receive their career assignments, Jonas is assigned as the new Receiver of Memories. As he trains with a man called the Giver, he discovers all the things his community lacks – pain, joy, weather, color, individuality, and choice.
Characterize the main protagonist: Jonas is almost 12 at the start of the story and is intelligent and caring.
Tone/mood: quietly thought-provoking
Style/language: Precise – almost to the point of being spare – while still conveying great depth.
Literary Fiction sub-genre: Elements of fantasy, science-fiction, suspense, and philosophy.
Awards: Newberry Medal, Regina Medal, William Allen White Award, School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, among others.
Other Observations: This book is at the same time both simple and incredibly profound. Lowry’s use of subtle foreshadowing is beautiful. The reader and Jonas come to realizations together. From the first page, there is a sense of mild foreboding underlying the seeming perfection of Jonas’s world, and the author builds on this beautifully.
While there are deep philosophical concepts, like that of freewill and choice, euthanasia, and a milder version of the Orwellian dystopia, I would say that any student who has read Number the Stars, The Diary of a Young Girl, or other deeper Newberry winners is ready for this book.
On a personal note, this is the book that turned my sister from a reluctant reader to an avid one.
Appropriate for teens? For mature middle-schoolers
Reviewer’s initials: EI Date:2-22-13
How many stars would you give this book? 4.5 out of 5
What I say about my sister in that review is true. I was the kid who would get caught reading a book under the desk in math. I was the one who had to be told to put the book away and go to bed. My sister was never that way as a kid. She never enjoyed reading - getting her to read was harder and more painful than getting a cat to walk on a leash (having tried that, I know). Then one day, when she was in 7th grade, a very observant and out-of-the-box thinking English teacher took her aside, handed her this small, unassuming-looking paperback and said, "Try this, I think you'll like it."
And that was it - my sister discovered that she enjoyed reading. But not just the act of reading - immersing herself in a well-crafted and thought provoking story. Fast forward many years. She writes. She majored in philosophy at a prestigious liberal arts university. She teaches (her favorite age group being those difficult 11-year-olds she once was). She's working on getting her Master's degree in education. This from the girl who for many years would. Not. Read.
And yes, there's controversial stuff in it - this spoils a bit of the plot if you haven't read it - but in the book Jonas discovers that government-initiated euthanasia (though it's never called that) is being practiced regularly. Anyone above the age of about 11 is medicated to prevent emotions and urges. Again, some of these are not really elaborated on. An adult understands exactly what this medication is meant to suppress. A child of Jonas's age reading it just picks up that they're preventing you from feeling something. But is the controversy worth it if it gets a child thinking about important topics like rights and free will? Is it worth if it gets a reluctant reader to pick up a book and read? Is it maybe better to ease a child into that Orwellian place that they'll have to learn about eventually without throwing them straight into the deep end that is 1984? (And as someone who read 1984 last minute the night before the first day of school for 9th grade and had the bejesus scared out me, my answer to the last is "Yes!")