The Unidentified aka The Sister-Book-Marathon

The Unidentified by Rae Mariz, Balzer + Bray, 2010, 304 pp, ISBN: 0061802085

Recap-

Kid has reached level 15, but for her the Game has really just begun. All across America, teenagers are attending high school at "the Game," which in Kid's case is held in a converted mall. Rather than being led by teachers, the Game is run by corporate sponsors who trademark every aspect of their lives, right down to their notebooks. 

While popularity has long been an ultimate goal for many high-schoolers, the Game has taken popularity to a whole new level: the more friends you have on your in-touch profile, the more likely your odds of getting "branded" by a corporate sponsor. Once you're branded, you are one of the Game's celebrity students - perked with all of the goodies the sponsors have to offer, and idolized by your peers.

Kid had never had much interest in getting branded, preferring instead to spend her time working on new music tracks with Mikey and Ari. But after witnessing a masked body being tossed over a railing in a suicide stunt, and then discovering that no one really even cared, Kid starts to realize that some of the Game's players have secrets that go much deeper than an in-touch profile.

Review- 

I've never read a projection of the future that seemed so creepily possible. In just a few short years, I have a feeling that Kid's story could be real life. In the Game, cliques still rule the school and an in-touch is just a hyped up Facebook/Twitter hand-held device. Kids are still figuring out sneaky new ways to bypass parental controls, and video games are still a favored escape from reality. According to Kid, and author Rae Mariz, the future doesn't look too different from the present. 

The general idea of the Game is pretty genius: students still have to take classes and research different pieces of information, but each correct answer adds points to their overall score, allowing them to move up more quickly in the Game. On top of that, most of the classes somehow involve video games and virtual reality. Their "classrooms" include the DIY Depot, the Math Attack arcade, and the Robot Combat Arena. Who wouldn't want to go to a school like that? Of course, everything comes at a price. And in the Game, the price is the right to privacy.

Kid's struggle to choose her own path was written so authentically. Who hasn't considered selling their soul - or at least a few secrets - for the chance to be a part of the "in crowd?" As Kid questioned her options, and struggled to decipher the difference between true friends and trend followers, she reminded me of a dozens of other students I've worked with in real life. Kid's story is one that many kids will quickly identify with.

My one issue (and this is probably going to sound strange considering that they are supposedly the basis for the whole book) is that The Unidentified group was never really that compelling to me. I understood that Kid felt compelled to solve the mystery behind the group, particularly after the incident with Mikey, but I just never could get myself to care about who they were or what they were doing. I just wanted to know what would ultimately happen to Kid! 

Although I will say, the vision of the last few pages was pretty spectacular.

Recommendation-

I would recommend this book to anyone who is intrigued by (or addicted to!) social media and the path that it is leading us all down. I think Kid's story can be equally appreciated by both the ladies and fellas!

Favorite Quotes from The Unidentified-

"Stepping in, I was hit with the bass rattle of the Wu Tang Clan: 'Rraw, I'ma give it t'ya, with no trivia...' They always play classic music in there."

"Liquid Crack" - You caught me. This isn't a quote persay... but I'm definitely requesting this pop for our school vending machine.

"Generation AAA was... the marketing term assigned to us, the kids spawned after Generation X, Y, and Z. They had been the end of an era. We were the beginning."

So what's the story with the Sister-Book-Marathon?

As a personal rule, I pretty much never buy books. Lucky for me, my local public library is amazing. However, that also means that I typically read most books several months (or years) after they've been published. So over Christmas break when my little sister decided to buy a stack of new books for her own classroom, I was more than happy to provide recommendations. Particularly because I was planning on reading all of them before they went home to Indiana...

Sarah had started reading The Unidentified practically before she even left the store, but I had my heart set on taking it back to Baltimore with me. This required her to embark on a 24-hour-reading-marathon where she took the book everywhere she went, with me prodding over her shoulder, "Stop laughing! Read faster!" This is her reading in a parking garage:

Before boarding her airport shuttle, she ended up taking pictures of the last 4 pages so that she could hand the baton book over to me while she finished reading on the plane. For photographic evidence of the whole affair, check out her blog: Overlap. Thank you for sharing, Sarah!!