Feed
Binding: Paperback
Imprint: Candlewick Press
Age 14+
Classic Science Fiction Modern & Contemporary Fiction (Post C 1945) Science Fiction
The tour de force that set the gold standard for dystopian YA fiction — in a compelling paperback edition.
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a chance to party during spring break. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its ever-present ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. M. T. Anderson’s not-so-brave new world is a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.
Creators
Author of the acclaimed young adult novels Feed, Thirsty and Burger Wuss. Writing the celebrated satire FEED, says M. T. Anderson, was a process that demanded a fair share of field research. "I read a huge number of magazines like SEVENTEEN and STUFF," he confesses. "I listened to cell phone conversations in malls. Where else could you get lines like 'Dude, I think the truffle is totally undervalued'?" It seems these furtive observations paid off: FEED, a National Book Award Finalist, was honored with the LOS ANGELES TIMES Book Prize, among many other major awards, and dubbed "satire at its finest" (KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review). Said the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, "FEED demonstrates that young-adult novels are alive and well and able to deliver a jolt." The research undertaken to write THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUME 1: THE POX PARTY, a National Book Award Winner, was on a wholly different magnitude, the author recalls. Street-side eavesdropping was replaced with visits to battlefields in historic Lexington, Massachusetts, and hours spent in libraries poring over 250-year-old documents. In addition to writing for young adults, M. T. Anderson also writes for younger readers, including two picture books illustrated by the award-winning Kevin Hawkes: HANDEL, WHO KNEW WHAT HE LIKED, a biography of eighteenth-century composer George Frideric Handel, which was a BOSTON GLOBE-HORN BOOK Honor Winner, and ME, ALL ALONE, AT THE END OF THE WORLD, which NEWSDAY called "a persuasive argument for a little solitude and space to think." M. T. Anderson lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
Reviews
Subversive, vigorously conceived, painfully situated at the juncture where funny crosses into tragic, FEED demonstrates that young-adult novels are alive and well and able to deliver a jolt.
New York Times
M.T. Anderson has created the perfect device for an ingenious satire of corporate America and our present-day value system…Like those in a funhouse mirror, the reflections the novel shows us may be ugly and distorted, but they are undeniably ourselves.
The Horn Book (starred review)
The crystalline realization of this wildly dystopic future carries in it obvious and enormous implications for today’s readers — satire at its finest.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
This satire offers a thought-provoking and scathing indictment that may prod readers to examine the more sinister possibilities of corporate-and media-dominated culture.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
What really puts the teeth in the bite…is Anderson’s brillinat satiric vision in the semaless creation of this imagined but believable world. The writing is relentlessly funny, clever in its observations and characters….
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)
A gripping, intriguing, and unique cautionary novel.
School Library Journal
Many teens will feel a haunting familiarity about this future universe.
Booklist
Both hilarious and disturbing.
Booklist Editors' Choice
In spite of its foreboding overtones, FEED is in a sense an optimistic novel. By involving its readers in the act it suggests is central to society’s survival, the book offers hope.
Riverbank Review
Although set in the future, Anderson’s novel is a stunning indictment of contemporary America and its ever-increasing obsession with consumerism even in the face of impending environmental collapse . . . the novel is both intense and grim. It should, however, appeal strongly to mature and thoughtful readers who care about the future of their world.
VOYA
Disturbing yet wickedly funny, with as brilliant a use of decayed language as Russell Hoban’s post-apocalyptic RIDDLEY WALKER.
Horn Book Fanfare, The
This dystopic vision is dark but quite believable. Sad and strong and scary.
Chicago Tribune
The book is fast, shrewd, slang-filled and surprisingly engaging.
New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
This wickedly funny and thought-provoking novel is written in a slang so hip it is spoken only by the characters in this book. Teens will want to read it at least twice.
Miami Herald
A darkly comic satire that can be read as a promise or a warning.
Detroit Free Press
The flashes of humor as well as the cleverly imagined grim future world should quickly draw readers into this look at teenage love and loss, and at consumerism carried to its logical extreme.
Kliatt Book Review
The scariest part of FEED’s brilliantly conceived futuristic dystopia is that much of it isn’t futuristic . . . To list all the prescient details in this novel would require taking something from nearly every page.
Riverbank Review
Frightening in its realistic depiction of what is possible in a culture addicted to information, this novel is a guaranteed conversation-starter.
Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books of the Year
It’s exhilarating to decipher Anderson’s futuristic adolescent slang, but his story is a serious one. He has an uncanny gift for depicting how teenagers see the world.
BookPage
This language sets a perfect tone for the story of a teenage boy growing up in a frighteningly futuristic world . . . The scariest thing of all is its unnerving plausibility.
Raleigh News and Observer
Surely one of the most prescient novels of last 20 years.
Lev Grossman
As with the best futuristic fiction, it’s scary how little needs to be exaggerated.
Newsday
The novel is chilling in the way only a well crafted and darkly writ satire can be.
DigBoston.com
M.T. Anderson mentioned in “Tales From the Slush Pile”
PW Children's Bookshelf
