Dreambender - Softcover

Kidd, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807517267 ISBN 13: 9780807517260

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company, 2017

Synopsis

Everyone in the City is assigned a job by the choosers―keeper, catcher, computer. Callie Crawford is a computer. She works with numbers: putting them together, taking them apart. Her work is important, but sometimes she wants more. Jeremy Finn is a dreambender. His job is to adjust people's dreams. He and others like him quietly remove thoughts of music and art to keep the people in the City from becoming too focused on themselves and their own feelings rather than on the world. They need to keep the world safe from another Warming. But Jeremy thinks music is beautiful, and when he pops into a dream of Callie singing, he becomes fascinated with her. He begins to wonder if there is more to life than being safe. Defying his community and the role they have established for him, he sets off to find her in the real world. Together, they will challenge their world's expectations. But how far will they go to achieve their own dreams?

About this title

About the Author:

Ronald Kidd is the author of ten novels for young readers, including the highly acclaimed Night on Fire and Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial. His novels of adventure, comedy, and mystery have received the Children’s Choice Award, an Edgar Award nomination, and honors from the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. He is a two-time O’Neill Playwright who lives in Tennessee.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 4-8-Welcome to civilization after the Warming. Floodwaters rose, and legend tells that survivors rode an arklike craft until they landed in the City. City folk work at prescribed jobs and value history and remembrance as ways not to repeat their ancestors' mistakes. Callie, 13, works as a computer. Her interest in painting and music is discouraged, considered to be a dangerous distraction to society. Not too far away lives young, inquisitive Jeremy Finn, a dreambender. He is learning his job-entering the dreams of City folk and stamping out any perceived threats to society, like Callie's singing. Jeremy sees Callie in his dreams and begins to question his work. He leaves the Meadow to find her, uncovering the secret underpinnings of their society. Jeremy and Callie call for change and freedom in the book's final act. Kidd raises the essential issues of government and free will without violence or despair, making for a kinder, gentler dystopian novel, and explores difficult choices without being preachy. Callie and Jeremy are likable characters who risk everything to be themselves. Other than the threat of discovery and some chase scenes, there isn't much peril, which gives the book a dreamy, peaceful feeling that mutes the drama somewhat. Kidd's spare prose winds around dialogue and description, creating images for readers as vivid as Jeremy's dreams. Short sentences will speed reluctant readers through the text. VERDICT This read-alike of Lois Lowry's The Giver and Jeanne DePrau's The City of Ember (Random, 2003) will make for meaty group discussion.-Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CTα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0807517267
• ISBN 13: 9780807517260
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256