If you liked The Giver, then try...

ByMs. Caldwell

Media Specialist

Companion Titles by Lois Lowry• Gathering Blue

– Kira, an orphan with a twisted leg, lives in a world where the weak are cast aside. She fears for her future until she is spared by the all-powerful Council of Guardians. Kira is a gifted weaver and is given a task that no other community member can do. While her talent keeps her alive and brings certain privileges, Kira soon realizes she is surrounded by many mysteries and secrets. No one must know of her plans to uncover the truth about her world and see what places exist beyond.

• Messenger– For the past six years, Matty has lived in Village and flourished under the guidance of Seer, a

blind man, known for his special sight. Village was a place that welcomed newcomers, but something sinister has seeped into Village and the people have voted to close it to outsiders. Matty has been invaluable as a messenger. Now he must make one last journey through the treacherous forest with his only weapon, a power he unexpectedly discovers within himself.

The Ear, the Eye, and the ArmBy Nancy Farmer

• ‘It is the year 2194 in Harare, Zimbabwe. When the three over-protected children of General Amadeus Matsika are kidnapped, they learn that their country is a land of contrasts. Wealthy people live in homes staffed by robots and protected by automatic Dobermans, while the poor live in a neighborhood known as The Cow's Guts, mining for plastic within the tunnels of Dead Man's Vlei (a toxic waste dump). Resthaven is an enclave for people who cling to the ancient traditions, beliefs, and customs of the Shona tribe, but the nearby MacIlwaine Hotel is a mile-high vertical city of apartments, schools, clinics, and supermarkets. As the children journey from one predicament to another, three unlikely detectives from an agency known as The Ear, the Eye and the Arm attempt to rescue them. Narrator George Guidall does a brilliant job of conveying the complex natures of a wide range of characters. Without resorting to vocal stereotypes, he portrays military generals, adolescent girls, gang thugs, fey tutors, ancient spirit mediums and small boys with equal skill.

Truesight by David Stahler, Jr.

• On a frontier world is a colony called Harmony. Like everyone who lives there, Jacob is blind. In his debut novel, David Stahler Jr. vividly imagines a future where genetic engineering has taken a startling turn. On a distant planet, in a utopian community of the blind, one remarkable young man will discover just how much there is to see -- if only he is willing to look.

The Secret Under My Skinby Janet McNaughton

• In the year 2368, humankind must struggle to survive under dire environmental conditions and strict government control. In this startling world, one brave young woman begins to unravel a web of lies about life on Earth that will empower her to discover, at last, who she really is. McNaughton vividly imagines an all-too-believable future and celebrates the impact that one person can make on the world.

The Scorch Trialsby James Dashner

• Solving the Maze was supposed to be the end. No more puzzles. No more variables. And no more running. Thomas was sure that escape meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one really knew what sort of life they were going back to. In the Maze, life was easy. They had food, and shelter, and safety . . . until Teresa triggered the end. In the world outside the Maze, however, the end was triggered long ago. Burned by sun flares and baked by a new, brutal climate, the earth is a wasteland. Government has disintegrated--and with it, order--and now Cranks, people covered in festering wounds and driven to murderous insanity by the infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim . . . and meal. The Gladers are far from finished with running. Instead of freedom, they find themselves faced with another trial. They must cross the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the world, and arrive at a safe haven in two weeks. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them. Thomas can only wonder--does he hold the secret of freedom somewhere in his mind? Or will he forever be at the mercy of WICKED?

The Maze Runnerby James Dashner

• When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he's not alone. When the lift's doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade--a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls. Just like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they got to the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they've closed tight. And every 30 days a new boy has been delivered in the lift. Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up--the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more surprising yet is the message she delivers. Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind.

Series by Margaret Peterson Haddix• The Missing Series:

Found (#1) Sent (#2)

Sabotaged (#3), Torn (#4)

Caught (#5)Twelve-year-old Jonah has always known that he was

adopted, and he has never thought it was a big deal. Then he and a neighbor/friend, Chip, who finds out he is also adopted, begin receiving mysterious letters, saying things such as "You are one of the missing" and "Beware! They're coming back to get you". Jonah, Chip, and Jonah's younger sister, Katherine, are plunged into a mystery that involves the FBI, a vast smuggling operation, an airplane that appeared out of nowhere—and people who seem to disappear and reappear at will... The kids discover they are caught in a battle between two opposing forces that want very different things for Jonah and Chip's lives. Over course of tragic and exhilarating times the trio uncover answers to their darkest questions

• The Shadow Children Series• Among the Hidden• Among the Impostors• Among the Betrayed,• Among the Barons• Among the Brave• Among the Enemy• Among the Free

• A dystopian country which suffers food shortages due to a drought [1] and the effects of the government's totalitarian attempts to control resources as a way to solidify its power.[2] The Population Police enforce the government's Population Law, killing or imprisoning "shadow children," any third, fourth, fifth, etc. child.

Feed by M. T. Anderson

• Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains. For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires

Uglies Seriesby Scott Westerfeld

• Uglies• Pretties• Specials• Extras

• Set in a future post-scarcity dystopian world in which everyone is turned "Pretty" by extreme cosmetic surgery upon reaching age 16. It tells the story of teenager Tally Youngblood who rebels against society's enforced conformity, Written for young adults, Uglies deals with adolescent themes of change, both emotional and physical.

• Under the surface, Uglies speaks of high profile government conspiracies and the danger of trusting the omnipresent Big Brother. While the underlying story condemns war and all the side effects thereof, the true thrust of the story is that individual freedoms are far more important than the need for uniformity and the elimination of personal will.

Clone Codes Seriesby Patricia, Fredrick, and John

McKissack• In the year 2170 an underground abolitionist

movement fights for the freedom of cyborgs and clones, who are treated no better than slaves

The Cyborg Wars are over and Earth has peacefully prospered for more than one hundred years. Yet sometimes history must repeat itself until humanity learns from its mistakes.

House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

• The House of the Scorpion is a dark, twisted, but ultimately hopeful story about a young clone named Matt who grows up in a dystopian world under the control of a drug lord. Oh, and this drug lord happens to be the man from whom he was cloned. As it turns out, this guy, called El Patrón, cloned our protagonist so that he might harvest Matt's organs to keep himself alive later in life.

The Tripods Seriesby John Christopher

– 1 The White Mountains – 2 The City of Gold and Lead – 3 The Pool of Fire – 4 When the Tripods Came

• Humanity has been conquered and enslaved by "the tripods", unseen alien entities (later identified as "Masters") who travel about in gigantic three-legged walking machines. Human society is largely pastoral, with few habitations larger than villages, and what little industry exists is conducted under the watchful presence of the tripods. Lifestyle is reminiscent of the Middle Ages, but artifacts from later ages are still used, giving individuals and homes an anachronistic appearance.

• Humans are controlled from the age of 14 by implants called "caps", which suppress curiosity and creativity and leave the recipient placid and docile, incapable of dissent. People who are capped are happy to leave home and serve the tripods. The caps cause them to worship the tripods. Some people, whose minds are broken (instead of successfully being controlled) under the pressure of the cap's hypnotic power become vagrants, who wander the countryside. One of the books contains a discussion among Masters that "We should cap humans sooner, to reduce the risk of precocious people getting independent-minded soon enough to try to evade being Capped, but we cannot, because we cannot Cap them until their braincases have stopped growing."

Quantum Prophecy Seriesby Michael Carroll

• www.quantumprophecy.com.

• Ten years ago all the world's superhumans disappeared... • No one knows what happened to them: the

disappearance is one of the greatest mysteries of all time. • But now two teenage boys discover that they are

developing strange, powerful abilities, and as the mystery of the superhumans begins to unravel, the boys become the nexus of spiraling events that could very lead to the destruction of the human race.

Virtual War Chronologsby Gloria Skurzynski

• Imagine a life of virtual reality -- a childhood contained in a controlled environment, with no human contact. Corgan has been genetically engineered for quick reflexes, high intelligence, and physical superiority. He is unbeatable in battle. But he lives his life in a lonely module. What is a real sunset like? Or a friend? When he meets fellow teens Sharla and Brig, Corgan begins to doubt the Federation, whose decisions he has unquestioningly obeyed. Life outside virtual reality may be for him. His fourteen years of training are about to end as the real challenge approaches. But he can't lose focus now: He must win a virtual war, or the Western Hemisphere will be lost forever.

Lockdownby Alexander Gordon Smith

• Furnace Penitentiary: the world’s most secure prison for young offenders, buried a mile beneath the earth’s surface. Convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, sentenced to life without parole, “new fish” Alex Sawyer knows he has two choices: find a way out, or resign himself to a death behind bars, in the darkness at the bottom of the world. Except in Furnace, death is the least of his worries. Soon Alex discovers that the prison is a place of pure evil, where inhuman creatures in gas masks stalk the corridors at night, where giants in black suits drag screaming inmates into the shadows, where deformed beasts can be heard howling from the blood-drenched tunnels below. And behind everything is the mysterious, all-powerful warden, a man as cruel and dangerous as the devil himself, whose unthinkable acts have consequences that stretch far beyond the walls of the prison.

• Together with a bunch of inmates—some innocent kids who have been framed, others cold-blooded killers—Alex plans an escape. But as he starts to uncover the truth about Furnace’s deeper, darker purpose,

Incarceronby Catherine Fisher

• Imagine a living prison so vast that it contains corridors and forests, cities and seas. Imagine a prisoner with no memory, who is sure he came from Outside, even though the prison has been sealed for centuries and only one man, half real, half legend, has ever escaped. Imagine a girl in a manor house in a society where time has been forbidden, where everyone is held in a seventeenth century world run by computers, doomed to an arranged marriage that appals her, tangled in an assassination plot she both dreads and desires. One inside, one outsideBut both imprisoned.Imagine a war that has hollowed the moon, seven skullrings that contain souls, a flying ship and a wall at the world's end.Imagine the unimaginable.Imagine Incarceron.

Invitation to the Gameby Monica Hughes

• A hard science fiction dystopian novel set in 2154,[1] a time when machines and robots perform most jobs. Because of this, very few people are employed, with many people living on a social welfare system for support. The unemployed people have nothing to look forward to, except various illicit drugs. Some have formed gangs, some are shown to be agitating for political reform (in chapter 5 there is a reference to leaflets printed up), and many are involved in organized crime of some form or another. The government, possibly the only government in existence at this point, is shown to have complete control over its citizens by restricting the unemployed to designated areas (DAs), and having similar control over the working-class.[2]

The Roarby Emma Clayton

• Mika lives in future London, behind The Wall: Solid concrete topped with high-voltage razor wire and guarded by a battalion of Ghengis Borgs, it was built to keep out the animals, because animals carry the plague.

Or so Mika's been told.

But ever since Ellie vanished a year ago, Mika's suspected his world may be built on secrets--and lies. When a mysterious organization starts recruiting mutant kids to compete in violent virtual reality games, Mika takes the chance to search for his twin sister--and the truth.

The City of Emberby Jeanne DuPrau

• Lights shine in the city of Ember—but at the city limits the light ends, and darkness takes over. Out there in the Unknown Regions, the darkness goes on forever in all directions. Ember—so its people believe—is the only light in the dark world.

• And now the lights are going out.• Is there a way to save the people of Ember? No one

knows. But Lina Mayfleet has found a puzzling document, and Doon Harrow has made discoveries down in the Pipeworks. With these clues, they start their search.

Silver Worldby Cliff McNish

• In Book Three of the Silver Sequence, the Roar descends upon Coldharbour, where millions of children huddle in search of protection. Milo, the silver child, is the first line of Earth's defense. Under his wings, Helen probes the Roar's mind with her gift of telepathy, searching for a weakness. The twins at last free the mysterious Protector from the ocean floor, while Walter strives to keep everyone alive while they search for a weapon that will destroy the Roar. Only Thomas can release that weapon-if he can finally discover the true purpose of his remarkable gift. Meanwhile, from Earth's inner core, Carnac, the Roar's firstborn, begins to emerge. Only Tanni and the Unearthers stand in his way...

The Unwantedsby Lisa McMann

• Every year in Quill, thirteen-year-olds are sorted into categories: the strong, intelligent Wanteds go to university, and the artistic Unwanteds are sent to their graves.

On the day of the Purge, identical twins Alex and Aaron Stowe await their fate. While Aaron is hopeful of becoming a Wanted, Alex knows his chances are slim. He's been caught drawing with a stick in the dirt-and in the stark gray land of Quill, being creative is a death sentence.

But when Alex and the other Unwanteds face the Eliminators, they discover an eccentric magician named Mr. Today and his hidden world that exists to save the condemned children. Artimé is a colorful place of talking statues, uncommon creatures, and artistic magic, where creativity is considered a gift... and a weapon.

Fahrenheit 451by Ray Bradbury

• Set in a bleak, dystopian future. Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

• Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

I, Robotby Isaac Asimov

• A collection of nine science fiction short stories woven together as Dr. Susan Calvin tells them to a reporter (the narrator) in the 21st century. Though the stories can be read separately, they share a theme of the interaction of humans, robots, and morality, and when combined they tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of robotics.

Ender’s Shadowby Orson Scott Card

• Bean, the main character, is a homeless child living in the hellish streets of Rotterdam in roughly 2170 after escaping as an infant from an illegal genetic engineering laboratory. Being hyper-intelligent and extremely young, Bean's experiences revolve primarily around his need for food. He joins a huge gang of children led by a girl named Poke and sets up a system in which they can all receive nourishment at a local soup kitchen. The draw-back on this is their increasing dependence on the bully Achilles, who is ruthless, mad, and methodical. Luckily for Bean, his incredible mind, creativity, and determination bring him to the attention of Sister Carlotta, a nun who is recruiting children to fight a war against the Buggers. At the training facility, Battle School, Bean's true genius becomes apparent. Not only is he smarter than average, he is smarter than any other child at Battle School, including Ender Wiggin. Despite Bean's intelligence, it is Ender who has been chosen to save humanity from the Buggers. Bean, being an extraordinary genius, begins to uncover secrets and truths about the school. Bean struggles to understand what quality Ender has that he does not, until he is assigned to draw up a "hypothetical" roster for Ender's army, and adds himself to the list. At first, Ender does not appear to recognize Bean's brilliance, but time shows that he was grooming Bean as his tactical support, putting him at the head of an unorthodox platoon challenged to outthink the teachers who designed the game, and defeat their attempts to tip the balance of advantages towards Ender's rivals.[2]