Don’t Mess With My Mockingjay Pin

By Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

There’s probably no one left in the English-speaking world who hasn’t at least heard of The Hunger Games, now that the movie has gone viral. But if you haven’t read the trilogy, don’t dismiss it as popular trash. It’s much more than that.

I first read The Hunger Games and Catching Fire in 2009 when I received copies in a boodle bag at a Scholastic authors’ dinner. I had only heard a bit of buzz back then, and I wasn’t convinced, but I took them on holiday, and started reading the first when I ran out of other books. I had no idea what I was in for. I read The Hunger Games in one long gulp, then immediately plunged into Catching Fire. My biggest disappointment was having to wait a whole year for Mockingjay.

I’m not going to tell you what these books are about because it will make your eyes glaze over. Just read them. Trust me. And no, you cannot have my Mockingjay pin. It’s nearly vintage.

While going through Hunger Games withdrawal, I read Scott Westerfeld’s The Uglies trilogy – Uglies, Pretties, Specials. These dystopian novels predate The Hunger Games trilogy by half a decade, but they deal with a similar sort of future, where there is a hierarchy of humans, a big brother bureaucracy and a group of rebels who try to overturn the system. A rollicking ride. I don’t like everything Westerfeld writes, but this series still reads fresh, even seven years later.

With all this dystopia whirling in my head, I happened upon Canadian author Catherine Austen’s first young adult novel, All Good Children. While Westerfeld and Collins have a young female as the main character and romance as the emotional pull, Austen takes a more difficult route. All Good Children is shown from the point of view of Max, a rebellious male teen. And while Max is interested in girls and one girl in particular, romance takes a back seat to the bond between Max and his best friend Dallas. Of equal concern is protecting his family.

The novel is set sometime in the future in a northeastern American community that is run by an all-powerful chemical company that seems to have replaced the role of government. Within the community, people have strictly controlled jobs, housing, schooling, healthcare, and behaviour, but outside the community limits, people live in broken down cars, breathe foul air, starve, and die if they get sick. People within the community have all of their needs looked after, but their every action is monitored. For rebellious Max, it is a confining life, but he enjoys the perks.

It is currently possible to predict the health and sex of a child in-vitro. In Austen’s world, parents with enough money can order up the ideal child like ordering toppings on a pizza. Fetuses deemed less than super-perfect are aborted, creating a dichotomy of super-gifted rich kids versus the offspring of the average poor.

Max’s parents couldn’t afford programming him for perfection but they had enough money to choose his egg from a selection of fertilized eggs. His sister Ally was a mistake. She is normal, so in this world she is considered barely human. Max’s best friend, Dallas had pre-birth selection done, and while he is perfection in many ways, he didn’t turn out as well as his brother.

All of this is just part of life and the teens find ways of coping and getting around authority. That all changes when a new policy, called Nesting, is initiated. Imagine a society where every disagreeable action is considered a syndrome that needs to be treated. Just as kids with ADD are now medicated, in Austen’s future world, every child is medicated so their behaviour is ideal from a parent and teacher point of view. Think Stepford wives for kids.

Max’s sister Ally is an early casualty of Nesting, but Max and Dallas manage to evade the inoculations and pretend they’re nested zombies until they can figure out a way to escape.

There are layers and nuances, political commentary and good sly humour, all wrapped up in great storytelling and interesting characters. All Good Children is a thought-provoking page-turner and it has been shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book of the Year.

Next on my dystopian reading pile? Divergent by Veronica Roth and Blood Red Road by Moira Young.

All Good Children, Catherine Austen | Orca |  300 pages | $19.95 | cloth | ISBN #978-1554698240