I was planning to skip this 2012 Rhode Island Teen Book
Award nominee, but then it won…Between that and the fact that Amazon offered it
as one of their Kindle daily deals, I decided to give it a whirl, very much
prepared to read yet another dystopian fiction book for teens. Ho hum.
I was pleasantly surprised, very pleasantly surprised.
Yes, this is dystopian fiction, but the story of Cassia
discovering that the Society is not the perfect place that she thought it was
makes a great story of self-discovery.
Besides, it includes some great snippets of poetry from Dylan Thomas, the greatest poet that Wales ever produced, like
"My birthday began with the water -
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days"
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days"
'Poem in October' from Dylan
Thomas' Collected Poems (London: Phoenix, 2003)
Any excuse to expose young adults to great poetry!
I'd recommend this book to young adults from about 6th grade up. The book is a lighter, less violent Hunger Games. Looking forward to reading the next two books in the series.
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