All You Need Is Love... and Individuality

My favorite genre of Young Adult fiction is dystopian fiction.  Dys meaning "not" and topian taken from "Utopian" or an ideal society.  Dystopian societies are usually formed out of tyranical rule.  Its citizens have few freedoms and many laws, many which seem outlandish to the reader, all in an effort to form a society that is seemingly perfect and without conflict.  The problem is that it is these laws and limited rights that breed conflict.  Authors tend to create these fictional societies as a way of commenting on our own forms of governing conventions.  Authors pose questions through their stories, asking students/teens/readers to examine and/or reexamine their views on many principles, easily tying in to conversations regarding political science, history, and the humanities.  Dystopian societies are often set in the future, and that is why these books are generally considered a sub-genre of science fiction. 

As Banned Books Week was a little over a week ago, and I like to do things in my own time, I've decided I would go through my favorite YA books in this typically challenged genre.

1.  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What can I say, Ray Bradbury's the boss.  This book is for everyone who believes in the power of books.  And if that's not enough, there's a killer spider-robot chase scene.  I believe in the importance of rereading and reading again good books, but I don't do it enough.  Except with this book and a few others. 

Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave.

Umm... for the millenials, at what temperature does an eReader burn?

Controversial:  Montag's pill-popping wife.

2.  The Giver by Lois Lowry

For my degree, I had to take an Adolescent Literature course at UMKC.  I had been used to reading out of anthologies, studying Shakespeare, falling asleep to Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, and learning gaelic and other Old English/anglo-saxon dialogues.  Great for starting conversations with other English majors, but generally not beneficial or entertaining in any other fashion.  I was interested even less in reading kids' books.  I had to do a lot of reading in college, and it was the one time in my life that I started to despise reading.  One of the course requirements for my class was that we had to read twelve books from a provided list of notable YA/chapter books.  Many of my selections were random, while a few based on recommendations.  The Giver happened to be one that I chose.    I tucked myself into bed one night with this book at the top of my stack, and I ended up reading it cover to cover that night.

Controversial:  Pills that stop "stirrings."  Unwanted babies and elderly alike are euthanized.

3.  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

This book's a classic, but I only first read it a couple of years ago.  I've read it once a year ever since, though.  Such a good story, with one of the most well-known and copied first sentence.  I actually made a book trailer a couple of years ago as a model for my students to make their own.







Controversial:  Heck, I don't know.  The idea that sameness is bad?

4.  The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

I loved this book, but why talk about it again when you can go here and read my inital review?

Controversial:  Language and brutality. 
5. Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Sometimes the best way to get a kid to read a book is to tell them why they shouldn't read it.  That happened to be the case for this book.  After I finished my book talk  for this book with each class, I had at least half of my students add their names to the waiting list to read this one.  I read this book when none of my books on hold were available and I had nothing else to read.  It was my first Shusterman novel, and I just thought it was going to be another average, ho-hum YA book.  Obviously it wasn't, or it wouldn't be on this list.  This story had a great premise:  You can "unwind" a child between the ages of 13 and 18 if you decide they'd make a better contribution to society as parts than as a whole.  In one chapter, the reader actually experiences a character getting unwound.  I feel ill just remembering it.

Controversial:  Uh, see last sentence.

**This blog post was probably spurred by two of the latest books I've read.  I highly recommend both, but I'm too tired to discuss either at this point in time.

*The Maze Runner by James Dashner

*Across the Universe by Beth Revis