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Welcome to Monty's wiki!
This fall, we will use this space for the dystopian young adult novels we are reading. Your discussions, reflections, and essays will be posted on your special space on Google docs.

DYSTOPIAN: a society characterized by human misery, such as poverty, oppression, disease, overcrowding, and environmental degradation.

UTOPIAN: a society that is perfect - socially, politically, and morally.

Genre: A category that has a particular theme or form. The genre of the books you are reading is SCIENCE FICTION. The subgenre is dystopian fiction. Authors in this genre tend to take some of the darker, more questionable or controversial aspects of our current world and predict how they may "play out" in the future if we don't act.

There will be questions and activities accompanying each novel. There will also be articles that relate to current trends in government, culture, medicine, and the environment. These articles are meant to provide you with real-world examples of themes that play out in your novels. They are meant to spark interest in creating a better future for the world in which we live.

The Founding Fathers of our country certainly wanted to create a world as perfect as they could. They took what they saw as imperfect and tried to correct it. See their Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our amendments to that document. In today's society, how can we use these documents to make sure our world doesn't descend into disorder? How do we protect freedom and our environment, foster equality, and provide for the common good? Are these protections still relevant? Are these protections out of our control?

The authors of these novels provide a glimpse into worlds in which the above questions are answered in one way or another.