The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel to the Hunger Games series and follows a young Coriolanus Snow before he is the President of the Capital. The book takes place during the 10th Hunger Games. Snow, as well as many other students at his school, are mentors to the tributes in the games. Coriolanus ends up mentoring the girl from district 12 named Lucy Grey Baird. As the Hunger Games nears, some nasty truths about the Capital are found out by Coriolanus.
The final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, follows Katniss and her journey through being the face of the rebellion against the Capital. The book starts when Katniss wakes up to find out she is in the hidden thirteenth district. Katniss finds out that all of Panem went into disarray after the confusing end to the 75th hunger games. When everyone in district 13 wants to use Katniss as a political pawn, she is faced with hard decisions that can determine the fate of everyone in Panem.
Shatter Me is a young adult dystopian novel written by Tahereh Mafi and is part of a nine book series. This book takes place in a future world where a reestablishment of the world has taken place. We meet Juliette who is locked in a Psych ward all alone, this is because of the crazy power she has. Anyone who touches her skin will suffer and die. Her solitude changes when she wakes up to guards telling her that she will be getting a cellmate, Adam.
Anthem by Ayn Rand is a captivating story that takes place in a dystopian society. In this society everyone is the same. The idea of personalities and uniqueness is eliminated. The main character is Equality and compared to others in his world, Equality is different because he thinks uniquely and acts differently. Equality goes against society and in secret he makes a discovery that will forever change his life.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is an insightful, dystopian novel with timeless metaphors. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman whose job is to burn books in a world where literature is prohibited. Montag has never questioned the book burnings and is content with his life, including his boring wife, who spends her days watching her television “family”. Until he meets Clarisse, the unconventional neighbor who leaves Montag with more questions than he can keep up with.
Uglies by Scott Westerfield is a dystopian that follows a girl named Tally Youngblood in a world that revolves around beauty and peer pressure. In Uglyville, everyone undergoes a procedure upon their sixteenth birthday to become “pretty”, which is essentially a cosmetic surgery that imbues traits of conventional attractiveness into the teenagers.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a dystopian book that takes place in a country known as Panem, where the Capitol has oppressive control over the twelve other districts. Katniss Everdeen, a teenager from District 12, volunteers to take her sister's place in the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games are a fight to the death involving teenagers from each district. The story follows Katniss as she experiences the Hunger Games.
Uglies is a dystopian novel set in a society where everyone gets a mandatory cosmetic surgery at 16 to become a “Pretty.” The story follows Tally Youngblood, a 15-year-old girl eagerly waiting her transformation. However, she starts doubting the system when she meets Shay, a rebellious girl who resists the operation and introduces Tally to the Smoke, a hidden city of people who reject societal beauty standards.
Scythe by Neal Shusterman takes place in a world where humanity has conquered natural forms of death with the help of a godlike artificial intelligence known as the Thunderhead. To prevent Earth from overpopulating, an organization known as the Scythes formed to “glean” citizens at random. The story follows two teenagers, Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch, who are selected by Scythe Faraday to train as his apprentices. Neither have a choice in the matter, but must compete for the title of scythe.
The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken takes place in a world where a virus called Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration wiped out the majority of American children, the ones who survived got psychic powers. The government created “rehabilitation” camps for the children, which in reality were just work camps to hold them in one place. The main character, Ruby Daly, had the power of mind control but convinced the person testing her that she had a different power.
