The Unidentified
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1.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Fifteen-year-old Katey, aka Kid, goes to school in the Game-a 'school' run by corporate sponsors. Social networking is as natural as breathing, your online profile is everything, and striving to get ahead in the popularity stakes involves a careful navigation that could go wrong at any turn.
The corporations watch the students to spot the next trend and the kids vie with each other to be noticed and sponsored by the corporations. Being 'branded' means celebrity status, not to mention financial freedom.
But what kind of freedom is it when you're always being watched? And how important is it to be the coolest and most popular kid when your identity is owned by a corporation? When Kid witnesses a mock suicide staged by an anonymous group calling itself the Unidentified she begins to ask herself those questions.
The Unidentified is a book about identity, freedom and integrity, a book about the power of marketing and the media, our desire to fit in and be popular, and the importance of making a stand for what you believe in.
'Subversive, cleverly written, challenging and surprising.' Cory Doctorow
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sometime in the future, big business controls education. Shopping malls have been converted to high-surveillance schools, and students are "players," participating in a combination of learning and entertainment in a multimedia experience called the Game, while sponsors look for new trends and exploitative opportunities. Katey, aka Kid, chafes at the whole process, but plays along to pursue her dream of making music. When a group calling itself the Unidentified pulls off a daring prank challenging people to think for themselves, Kid's curiosity leads her further down the path of disobedience and resistance. In an ironic twist, Kid's attempt at self-expression brings her to the attention of sponsors, who offer her everything she's wanted. But is it success, or is it selling out? The more she learns about the Unidentified, the less certain she is of her goals and the more determined she is to shake things up. An all-too-logical extrapolation of today's trends, this story of conformity, rebellion, and seeking one's identity is evocative of Scott Westerfeld and Cory Doctorow, injecting a dystopian setting with an optimistic, antiestablishment undercurrent. Ages 12 up.
