Dreambender

by Ronald Kidd

Overview

Jeremy controls the dreams of City dwellers to keep the earth safe. But then he sees Callie dreaming of singing and begins to wonder if there is more to life than being safe.

Everyone in the City is assigned a job by the choosers—keeper, catcher, computer. Callie Crawford is a computer. She works with numbers: putting them together, taking them apart. Her work is important, but sometimes she wants more. Jeremy Finn is a dreambender. His job is to adjust people's dreams. He and others like him quietly remove thoughts of music and art to keep the people in the City from becoming too focused on themselves and their own feelings rather than on the world. They need to keep the world safe from another Warming. But Jeremy thinks music is beautiful, and when he pops into a dream of Callie singing, he becomes fascinated with her. He begins to wonder if there is more to life than being safe. Defying his community and the role they have established for him, he sets off to find her in the real world. Together, they will challenge their world's expectations. But how far will they go to achieve their own dreams?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807517260
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	03/01/2017
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,012,173
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	470L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Ronald Kidd is the author of fourteen novels for young readers, including the highly acclaimed Night on Fire and Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial. His novels of adventure, comedy, and mystery have received the Children's Choice Award, an Edgar Award nomination, and honors from the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. He is a two-time O’Neill playwright who lives in Tennessee.

Editorial Reviews

"Comparison's to Lois Lowry's The Giver and Jeanne DuPrau's City of Ember will be inevitable, and though Kidd's novel may not be quite as epic in scope, it will likely still entice new generations of middle-grade readers."—Booklist Online

"Kidd tells an enjoyable story that features both appealing protagonists and well-presented ideas about the importance of creativity and following one's dreams."—Publishers Weekly

"Kidd's spare prose winds around dialogue and description, creating images for readers as vivid as Jeremy's dreams. Short sentences will speed reluctant readers through the text. This read-alike of Lois Lowry's The Giver and Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember will make for meaty group discussion."

From the Publisher

02/15/2016
This surprisingly upbeat dystopian tale may remind many readers of Lois Lowry's The Giver, with which it shares several significant plot points. Thirteen-year-old Callie Crawford is a "computer," a mathematician living in the post-apocalyptic City, dedicated to avoiding the high-tech hubris that led to the Warming and the fall of civilization. Jeremy Finn is a "dreambender," a psychic dream therapist who enters the dreams of City residents and manipulates them, turning them away from thoughts or actions that might endanger the City's fragile ecological balance. When Jeremy is assigned to Callie's dreams and ordered to end her potentially disruptive love of music, he finds that he can't do it. Jeremy compounds his crime by directly contacting Callie, something that is strictly forbidden, and the two children soon wind up on the run. Alternating between Callie and Jeremy's first-person perspectives, Kidd (Night on Fire) tells an enjoyable story that features both appealing protagonists and well-presented ideas about the importance of creativity and following one's dreams. Ages 9–12. Agent: Alec Shane, Writers House. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2016
Gr 4–8—Welcome to civilization after the Warming. Floodwaters rose, and legend tells that survivors rode an arklike craft until they landed in the City. City folk work at prescribed jobs and value history and remembrance as ways not to repeat their ancestors' mistakes. Callie, 13, works as a computer. Her interest in painting and music is discouraged, considered to be a dangerous distraction to society. Not too far away lives young, inquisitive Jeremy Finn, a dreambender. He is learning his job—entering the dreams of City folk and stamping out any perceived threats to society, like Callie's singing. Jeremy sees Callie in his dreams and begins to question his work. He leaves the Meadow to find her, uncovering the secret underpinnings of their society. Jeremy and Callie call for change and freedom in the book's final act. Kidd raises the essential issues of government and free will without violence or despair, making for a kinder, gentler dystopian novel, and explores difficult choices without being preachy. Callie and Jeremy are likable characters who risk everything to be themselves. Other than the threat of discovery and some chase scenes, there isn't much peril, which gives the book a dreamy, peaceful feeling that mutes the drama somewhat. Kidd's spare prose winds around dialogue and description, creating images for readers as vivid as Jeremy's dreams. Short sentences will speed reluctant readers through the text. VERDICT This read-alike of Lois Lowry's The Giver and Jeanne DePrau's The City of Ember (Random, 2003) will make for meaty group discussion.—Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT

School Library Journal

2016-01-09
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a society in which 13-year-olds are assigned careers must be in want of a savior. Callie lives in the City, the sole enclave of humanity (she thinks). Like all 13-year-olds, Callie has a single authorized job. In their machine-free society, she's a computer: a numbers expert. Callie's so skilled that city officials come to learn from the patterns she finds "beautiful," though she does wonder if there's more to life. On the other side of the great forest bordering the City lies the Meadow, where Jeremy is a dreambender trainee. Unbeknown to the City dwellers, dreambenders monitor their sleeping minds, snuffing out dangerous tendencies, especially the most dreaded: music. Jeremy is the "shining star" and "greatest hope" of the dreambenders (in his own words, "an inquisitive genius"), but he won't bend Callie's dream, for he's taken by her sleeping thoughts of song. He's determined to topple the dreambender regime with the help of Callie and the friends they make in the woods (including a cognitively disabled dark-skinned mute). Blonde Callie and black-haired Jeremy are both evidently white, with characters of color relegated to secondary status. Between this and the poor worldbuilding that underlies the story, the novel makes a sad contrast to Kidd's excellent Night on Fire (2015). There are plenty of novels about kindly-but-oppressive dystopian societies in which a child has a designated future path; skip this one. (Fantasy. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews