Last Wednesday, 10 teens showed up for the dystopian book discussion. I pulled our library's books in that genre from the teen section, and they covered almost the whole table. Dystopia really is the hot genre right now. (Good-bye supernatural romance!) We talked about what defines a dystopia, how it fits in with other genres, and the different kinds of dytopian books. People talked about their favorite dystopian novels, which included Uglies, The Hunger Games, Unwind, and Gone. We also discussed the issue of how much romance is appropriate in a dystopian novel. We read this recent New York Times article, which raises some interesting thoughts about new books like Matched and Delirium, where romance drives the dystopian plot. It was a great discussion, and a lot of people checked out books at the end.
You can continue the discussion on The New York Times' website. In their Room for Debate category, there is a whole section about dystopian teen books called The Dark Side of Young Adult Fiction. It has short articles (including ones by Scott Westerfeld and Maggie Stiefvater) from different viewpoints, plus you can add your comments!
Here's a list I put together of books for fans of The Hunger Games, which is mostly dystopian teen novels. Want to read more? Check out these lists from Wikipedia:
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