Book Review: All Good Children by Catherine Austen

All Good Children by Catherine Austen
Genre: Distopia, Young Adult
Pages: 312
Acquired: 09/07/11
Book of Your Shelf? No
Why I read it: LTER

Series: NoneMax, Ally and his mother live in a city called Middleton. Middleton is one of the few places left in the US with a decent school system, safe streets, healthy people, and little crime. But the administrators of Middleton think it could be even better. What if they found a way to get rid of misbehavior in children. Now, we're not talking about just the big ones like arson and fighting, but even the little ones, like giggling in class and expressing an opinion. As this is slowly taking effect on the children of all ages, few seem to speak out against it. Max's mother is one of those few and they begin to hatch a plan to escape from the city.

While, our main character is Max, I fell in love with his little sister Ally. Not the brightest in the bunch, she makes up for it in pure personality. Max, a fantastic graffiti artist, seems to be going through a fairly typical teenage angst stage that didn't seem overly original. The supporting characters tended to remain fairly flat throughout the book until they were effected by the new behavior "cure". Then they just turned into what Max calls zombies....a very appropriate name.

The plot centers around Max and his family and a few of his friends, especially his best friend Dallas, and their lives as they make plans to escape without being zombified. The plan they hatch is intricate and simple at the same time and keeps the story moving as we watch the town slowly become more and more suspicious of the family. There were times when the story seemed to drag a little, but perhaps that was done on purpose to show you how hard it was for the family to make it through. As a concept the story was amazing.

3.5/5