#ya dystopian
Dry
by Neal Shusterman & Jarod Shusterman
Drop everything right now and get this book and a liter of Smart Water.
It is not surprising that Dry is an unblinking-eyes-glued to the page-terror-filled car-crash that you can’t look away from type of read. It does, after all, have Neal Shusterman at its helm. Co-written with his son, Jarrod Shusterman, I suppose is proof that genius may in fact be genetic.
You may remember Shusterman from earlier entries about the incredible and terrifyingly possible world of The Unwind Dystology. If you were a fan of that, you will surely be a fan of this. A little Michael Grant’s Gone Series paired with Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14 world but wholly Shusterman in eloquence and verisimilitude to our world today.
Dry opens with a sputtering faucet, as the Morrow family tries to fill Kingston’s water bowl. The tap is dry. So begins the “Tap-Out,” a water crisis for all of Southern California. Seemingly not an unsurmountable event- well if it weren’t for all of SoCal becoming a dust bowl in recent years and the Frivolous Water Act draining all swimming pools, fountains and the like. Because people can survive for a time without transportation, electricity and adults - but every body needs water.
So embarks the tale of three misfits: the stalwart Alyssa, her younger brother Garrett and the survivalist creepy kid next door, Kelton. Three shortly turns into four and then five once a gifted street urchin and preppy spoiled business kid join the mix. This motley collection of characters proves that even the unlikeliest alliances can form during a catastrophe.
Shifting in narration amongst our rogue troupe while alternately periscoping outside into the unraveling martial law mob landscape compounds the growing tension in the narrative. We learn the sum of all the stories whereas each character only sees from one perspective, and in this case, maybe ignorance is bliss.
I almost started to reread this book as soon as I turned the final page. It was that good. It made me simultaneously want to stock up on perishables and take shorter showers. But this is the type of book-satisfying hydration that is not just skin deep. It is worthy of book-group discussions about mob mentality, about what lengths people will go to in order to survive, about conservation and climate change. But then, this at the core of all Shusterman novels: a serious question about humanity disguised as a YA page-turner.
And doesn’t that make you a little bit thirsty?
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RIP Peeta Mellark, he would have finessed the “cake or not”challenge
We’ve been hard at work this semester on our musical Dystopical!
It’s a musical parody of YA dystopian novels like Hunger Games, Maze Runner, and Divergent. We hit the stage on December 8th and hope to have a youtube video up of the performance!
College is hard enough without the world ending! What would YOU do if you woke up and found out everything you know is outlawed? If you lived in a Dystopia, would you be the Stereotypical Heroine destined to find love? Her nerdy and a-little-bit-too-clincy Nice-Guy friend? The distant and handsome Brooding Heartthrob, or the bad-ass Rebellious Girl? Join Kat, Peter, Trish, and Gil as they fight their way against the notorious “Center” and their plan to outlaw all forms of art; all the while learning that maybe embracing our differences is the key to success.
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s t r o n g
s t r o n g e r
strongest
Imagine me
master of my own universe
I am everything I ever dreamed of
~juliette ferrars, imagine me
