Feed by MT Anderson

1. Title: Feed, National Book Award Finalist

2. Author: M.T. Anderson

3. Illustrator: N/A

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Candlewick Books, 2004

5. Genre: Young adult, multi-media, post cyberpunk

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 9^th grade onward

7. Students will like this book because it represents modern ideas about past notions on the fear of excess. Also, they will like this book because the central themes of this book deal with love, technology, and a world that has moved one. Too, they will like it because it has a recycling theme.

8. A summary: Titus, the main character, is like everyone else in the society of his times, obsessed with consumerism and the feed. The feed is basically like the internet, but it is in a chip that is implanted into the persons brain. They use these chips for all experiences, they don’t even experience school, they just feed it. Until Titus meets Violet, who shares her love of real experiences with him. Because her family was too poor and because her father feared the feed, she did not have the feed injected into her brain, so she has a basic headset, which allows her to take off the feed at anytime. She takes him to watch meat grow, to party in a real sense, and experience life instead of just shopping online. Titus also teaches her the benefits of the feed and gets her to go to a club with him where a virus is sent out that messes up her chip, which leads to her death at the end of the novel, which is also symbolic since WWIII begins then as well.

9. Personal Response: I personally love the book. I think it gives a true look into the minds of teenagers in a future that is all too probable. Even now, it is impossible to pull children away from their media devices long enough to have a decent conversation, let alone teach them something. This book also broke my heart as Violet dies at the end with Titus by her side. The book represents to me, something of a warning and gives me an opportunity to teach a work that might also give some hesitation to the overwhelming masses in my school.

10. Teaching ideas:

If I were going to teach this book, and I do, I would first give students a dictionary of terms to help them become more comfortable with the language. Also, I apply that language change to the evolution of language through the website: www.urbandictionary.com. Then I would apply it to language change throughout the history of English language, with a specific focus on the evolution of Creole slave language in the south to modern African American Vernacular English. Additionally, I would teach this book with or before Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Finally, I would make a multimedia connection through the video clip http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/ talking about the effects of the internet.