Feed

Feed
Anderson, M.T. (2002). Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press. ISBN-10: 0763622591/ ISBN-13: 978-0763622596

Plot
In a future America entertainment and shopping technology are permanently wired into humans at birth, big corporations rule the world, and consumers are consuming the planet--everyone lives inside a pod with a fake sky and fake sun. Teenage Marcus goes on a Spring Break trip to the Moon, where he and his friends are temporarily disconnected from their feeds after an odd technological attack. He meets the unusual Violet, who is clearly a freak because she was home-schooled-- a truism still generally accepted in the American high school, who can write with a pen and remembers the time before she had her feed. Now, however, something has gone seriously wrong with Violet's feed, which is meg bad, as is the increasing environmental catastrophe and the looming war.

Reader’s Annotation
It’s iworld—instantaneous delivery of marketing and mass entertainment delivered directly to your brain via your electronic feed, implanted at birth—every American teen should read this book. Titus, on a Spring Break trip to the Moon, has his feed disrupted at a party, meets a strange girl, and ends up looking more closely than he wants to at the corporate controlled world of the feed.

Critique
Wow! Every kid with ipod buds in his ears downloading tunes while watching YouTube needs to read this book. The horrible vision of a world where the cacophony of marketing and cheap pop culture is permanently wired right into the human body at birth is viscerally recreated—it almost feels like a little voice in your head. Marcus displays both the limitations of the future culture and some of the recognizable sensitivity of a pre-feed teen—his guilt over his reluctance to become fully involved in the fatal technological malfunction of his new girlfriend rings true. The slang of the future is very well-done in Feed. Instead of sounding oddly manufactured like the colloqualisms in The Bar Code Tattoo, these expressions clearly evolve from older forms—as the son calls everyone ‘unit’, the dad still calls everyone ‘dude’, and the speech patterns in general illustrate the terrifying devolution of human communication. “It was meg big loud...all of the prices were coming into my brain, and it was bam bam bam”. The diction of the President manages to be both unsettling and oddly familiar:”…these corporate “watch”organizations, which are not the majority of the American people, I repeat not, and aren’t its will--It is our duty…to stand behind our fellow Americans and not cast...things at them. Stones, for example. The first stone”.

About the author
Michael Tobin Anderson, born in1968, went to Harvard, worked at Candlewick Press before his first book was published, and was an instructor at Vermont College. Besides writing several award-winning YA books, he has written picture books for young children


Genre
Science Fiction/dystopia

Curriculum Ties
great to pair in English with Brave New World!

Booktalking Ideas
Focus on the environmental background of the book.
In Titus' world, would it be right to get a feed for your children?
Ipod/facebook/texting=feed?.

Reading Level/Interest Age
grades 9-12

Challenge Issues
Profanity throughout.
Be knowledgeable about the book and prepared to discuss it calmly. Provide complaint form per board policy; list
awards summarized at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Tobin_Anderson
Feed was a 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner, a 2003 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book, and a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award


Why Included?
Used for Little Brother bibliography; YALSA Best Books for Young Adults 2003

Selection Tools
Genreflecting; YALSA list