Dreambender

February 15, 2016
This surprisingly upbeat dystopian tale may remind many readers of Lois Lowry's The Giver, with which it shares several significant plot points. Thirteen-year-old Callie Crawford is a "computer," a mathematician living in the post-apocalyptic City, dedicated to avoiding the high-tech hubris that led to the Warming and the fall of civilization. Jeremy Finn is a "dreambender," a psychic dream therapist who enters the dreams of City residents and manipulates them, turning them away from thoughts or actions that might endanger the City's fragile ecological balance. When Jeremy is assigned to Callie's dreams and ordered to end her potentially disruptive love of music, he finds that he can't do it. Jeremy compounds his crime by directly contacting Callie, something that is strictly forbidden, and the two children soon wind up on the run. Alternating between Callie and Jeremy's first-person perspectives, Kidd (Night on Fire) tells an enjoyable story that features both appealing protagonists and well-presented ideas about the importance of creativity and following one's dreams. Ages 9â12. Agent: Alec Shane, Writers House.

January 15, 2016
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a society in which 13-year-olds are assigned careers must be in want of a savior. Callie lives in the City, the sole enclave of humanity (she thinks). Like all 13-year-olds, Callie has a single authorized job. In their machine-free society, she's a computer: a numbers expert. Callie's so skilled that city officials come to learn from the patterns she finds "beautiful," though she does wonder if there's more to life. On the other side of the great forest bordering the City lies the Meadow, where Jeremy is a dreambender trainee. Unbeknown to the City dwellers, dreambenders monitor their sleeping minds, snuffing out dangerous tendencies, especially the most dreaded: music. Jeremy is the "shining star" and "greatest hope" of the dreambenders (in his own words, "an inquisitive genius"), but he won't bend Callie's dream, for he's taken by her sleeping thoughts of song. He's determined to topple the dreambender regime with the help of Callie and the friends they make in the woods (including a cognitively disabled dark-skinned mute). Blonde Callie and black-haired Jeremy are both evidently white, with characters of color relegated to secondary status. Between this and the poor worldbuilding that underlies the story, the novel makes a sad contrast to Kidd's excellent Night on Fire (2015). There are plenty of novels about kindly-but-oppressive dystopian societies in which a child has a designated future path; skip this one. (Fantasy. 10-13)

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March 1, 2016

Gr 4-8-Welcome to civilization after the Warming. Floodwaters rose, and legend tells that survivors rode an arklike craft until they landed in the City. City folk work at prescribed jobs and value history and remembrance as ways not to repeat their ancestors' mistakes. Callie, 13, works as a computer. Her interest in painting and music is discouraged, considered to be a dangerous distraction to society. Not too far away lives young, inquisitive Jeremy Finn, a dreambender. He is learning his job-entering the dreams of City folk and stamping out any perceived threats to society, like Callie's singing. Jeremy sees Callie in his dreams and begins to question his work. He leaves the Meadow to find her, uncovering the secret underpinnings of their society. Jeremy and Callie call for change and freedom in the book's final act. Kidd raises the essential issues of government and free will without violence or despair, making for a kinder, gentler dystopian novel, and explores difficult choices without being preachy. Callie and Jeremy are likable characters who risk everything to be themselves. Other than the threat of discovery and some chase scenes, there isn't much peril, which gives the book a dreamy, peaceful feeling that mutes the drama somewhat. Kidd's spare prose winds around dialogue and description, creating images for readers as vivid as Jeremy's dreams. Short sentences will speed reluctant readers through the text. VERDICT This read-alike of Lois Lowry's The Giver and Jeanne DePrau's The City of Ember (Random, 2003) will make for meaty group discussion.-Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT

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