FEED
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon—a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. 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.
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon—a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. 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 omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world—and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.
- Candlewick Press
- Paperback
- July 2012
- 320 Pages
- 9780763662622
Buy the Book
$8.99
About M.T. Anderson
M. T. Anderson is the author of Feed, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; the National Book Award–winning The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party and its sequel, The Kingdom on the Waves, both New York Times bestsellers and Michael L. Printz Honor Books; Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad; and many other books for children and young adults. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
Praise
“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 brilliant satiric vision in the seamless 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)
“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)
Discussion Questions
1. Feed is set in a future time when most Americans get their news, entertainment, and shopping tips from electronic transmitters implanted into their brains. In what ways are current technologies similar to the feed? How are they different?
2. Titus attends School™ but can barely read. What are students taught there? How would these lessons be useful to students?
3. What is happening in the world outside the feed? Is it, as the old man on the moon insists, a “time of calamity” (page 38)?
4. In Feed, product information flows directly, and unceasingly, to the brain. How deeply have commercial messages penetrated your own day-to-day life? Does the presence of that advertising bother you? Are there things about it that you like and that you would miss?
5. When Titus and his friends are disconnected from the feed for several days, how do they entertain themselves? What does Violet mean when she wonders: “Maybe these are our salad days” (page 60)? If your life is routinely spent online, what happens when you go offline for an extended period?
6. Violet gets very angry and bitter with her newfound friends. Do you agree with all of her accusations about their lifestyle, or do you think she goes too far? For example, Violet complains to Titus, “Because of the feed, we’re raising a nation of idiots. Ignorant, self-centered idiots” (page 113). Do you agree?
7. “We are a new people,” the feed reports (page 149). “It is now the age of oneiric culture, the culture of dreams.” What does it mean to live in a culture of dreams? Would you want to?
8. Feed is always provocative and thoughtful, but it is often very funny, too. What are your favorite comic moments in this novel?
9. When Violet is gravely ill, Titus mostly ignores her messages and rejects her pleas. What does Violet need from Titus? Why doesn’t he give it to her? Why does she believe he’s different from his friends? Is he?
10. The word feed can be a noun or a verb. Why is it a fitting title when used either way?