The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau has been sitting on my shelf for at least a year, and I just now got around to pulling it down.  Well, actually, my daughter pulled it off the shelf and read it in one day.  I had been meaning to get to it after hearing great reviews, but those of you who are book crazy like me know that there is always a new book to read and more books to buy.  I am never at a loss for books, both brand new and well used, at my house.  So, when my daughter devoured the book, I had to know why.

Wow! I finished it in two days (Moms are busier than twelve year olds!), and I am already halfway through the second in the series, Independent Study.  I have found my next Hunger Games series!

Put on your dystopian glasses and imagine our world after a completely devastating war.  The citizens of the United Commonwealth (a.k.a. the U.S.A.) are trying to rebuild the country and revitalize the land that has been devastated by chemical and biological weapons.  One the of Commonwealth’s greatest hopes is that the graduates of the University will be wise and brave enough to successfully take on this challenge.  But, only certain students are selected for the University, and the testing that they must endure reveals much more than just who is smart enough to be a university student.  Cia, our heroine, learns very quickly that she will be faced with much more than just a paper and pencil test. 

This book has everything that Hunger Games fans would hope for: a strong, female protagonist, a deceptive government, teen romance, intriguing mystery, and white-knuckle suspense.  So, if you have been missing Katniss and President Snow, then get ready for Cia and Dr. Barnes.

Side note:  Contemporary realistic fiction is still my favorite, but I will never get tired of dystopian books.  They make me think critically about life and humanity; they make me more aware of who I am as a citizen and where I want my world to be in the future.  I wonder how we could live in a world without emotions (The Giver) or how one city could get away with demanding sacrificial children as payment for rebellion (The Hunger Games) or how parents could ever think that the solution is to divide unruly kids through dissection (Unwind) or how a government could treat a whole city as its war-prevention laboratory experiment (Divergent).  What I love even more about these types of books, especially those in series, is that they are magnets for my students who have not had reading lives.  I have seen many aliterate readers pick up a book like The Testing, or any that I just mentioned, and become hooked on reading.  They want more books just like them.  And then, one day, they ask me for something else.  I can then recommend Between Shades of Gray or Out of My Mind or Walk Two Moons or some other beautiful piece of historical or contemporary fiction.  So, to all of those who have recently been praying for the end of the dystopian craze, I offer a word of caution.  These books may feel repetitive or tired in theme to you, but they have the power to open the door to literature for so many of our kids (and teachers) who closed it a long time ago.

So, forget the naysayers and read The Testing and then recommend it to your students!

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau, 325 pages from Houghton Mifflin books (2013). ISBN # 978-0-547-95910-8

Ideal for tween and young adult readers (or…dystopian fans everywhere… or…teachers who want to hook their students on reading…or…)