Dystopia

[almostn9ne]

AIBU to ask you to recommend dystopian novels for my 11 year old?

The Time Machine, Animal Farm, Edge Chronicles

Are they a young 11 - if a more mature pre-teen then the Hunger Games could be a good start. It is a little gruesome but if they play some of the more grown up video games, then I’d think they’d be able to handle the imagery. The Divergent books by Veronica Roth are similar as are The Maze Runner books by James Dashner. My son also enjoyed Uglies by Scott Westerfeld and Legend by Marie Lu. Not quite a full dystopian text by Ready Player One is a fantastic read too.

The Wind Singer

I love love love the Charlie Higson Enemy series and keep recommending them to anyone. They're dark and funny and gory, about a plague that kills adults and turns some into child-eating zombie type things, leaving gangs of kids roaming the UK trying to survive. They're really good.

At 11/12 I started reading John Wyndham, which is where my taste for a dystopia or a nice apocalypse came from. I really liked Day of the Triffids when I was that age, and then perhaps some of his short stories before moving on to Chocky and The Chrysalids and Midwich Cuckoos, things like that.

The Vandal, Sword of the Spirits, The Hunger Games

The Giver. Still one of my all time favourite books and I read it the first time at 10.

I think it depends on level of maturity, but Orwell would be an obvious choice. 1984 is one of my favourite books.

Slated
The Darkest Minds
The Hunger Games
The Last (yet to read this, may or may not be age appropriate)

I would say The Midwich Cuckoos too, I remember reading that in school, and The Chrysalids. Brave New World is fantastic, although maybe not suitable for an 11 year old.

The Noughts & Crosses series by Malorie Blackman.

Thanks all! Some great ideas here.

Second the Charlie Higson - I didn't read them but my younger son loved them.

Are you fixed on wanting full Dystopia or would "something not quite right with this set-up" fit the bill too? Because he also loved Skulduggery Pleasant, and other son got really into Cherub.

Ooh, just remembered the not-Pendle witches thing, will think of the name in a minute. The Spook's Apprentice by Joseph Delaney.

The Tripods series by John Christopher - husband really enjoyed them as a child.

I quite enjoyed Plague 99 by Jean Ure (written in 1989). Apparently there are loose sequels but Wikipedia doesn't make them sound great...

Try The Game by Enid Richmont- it’s a sort of teen Handmaid’s Tale

Brother in the land. (Possibly a bit more dated than many of the other suggestions, but still good.)

Not sure if you'd call it dystopian exactly, but the City of Ember trilogy is quite good.

Meg Rosoff, How I live now

I really enjoyed ‘brother in the land’ at about that age. There were a few more I liked as well but can’t for the life of me think of their titles now. One was about a nuclear holocaust that left 3 siblings hiding in a makeshift shelter in their kitchen. The oldest and youngest start to get sick and eventually the oldest takes the middle one to live with an old farmer or someone then goes back to the brother where she assumes they’ll die. But there was a sequel abd I think at least both of the sisters did survive.

Another one was about a girl living in a secluded hanlet after a nuclear attack. I think all the adults gradually go looking for help/civilisation until she’s all alone and then one day a stranger turns up.

Oh, remembered one. Plague 99 by Jean Ure. Plus 2 sequels I think.

Oh god yes, Brother in the Land is wonderful.

Depending how mature your 11 year old is, I also love the Tomorrow series by John Marsden - they're about a group of Australian teens who go off camping in the bush for a weekend, while an invasion happens, and a foreign country colonises Australia. They end up hiding out as guerrilla fighters in the bush. The first one is called Tomorrow When the War Began.

The one about the girl on her own in a secluded valley and a stranger turns up is Z for Zachariah.

I like it, but it's a very sanitised nuclear-armageddon, as she just happens to live in this highly unlikely meteorological enclave where everything is just fine, so she's kept away from all the nasties of radiation sickness and effects, plus the other people, that is what makes Brother in the Land so gripping. I remember being very annoyed as a 12 year old that this meteorological enclave seemed like a real cop out from the author.

@Kitsandkids I think the girl in the nuclear fallout and the stranger is called Z is for Zachariah - I loved that when I was a teen.

I've given him access to these suggestions and he liked @ShinyMe's recommendation for the Tomorrow series. He had a read of the blurb online and liked it so we've ordered the first one. Thank you all!

John Christopher is good, but not "the pendulum swings" - that one is adult.
He wrote the Tripods trilogy and prequel among others.

The one with the children in the makeshift kitchen shelter is Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence.

The Prince in Waiting Trilogy by John Christopher
Sheri S Tepper eg The Gate to Women’s Country

Oh my Z for Zachariah I think was my first. I got it from the library as an 11 year old.
Then John Wyndham.
I know this was a reading list for a pre teen but I have bookmarked so I can read all that I might have missed.