The more her father tries to help, the worse it gets. Things are getting so bad that it seems Ann is being targeted for harassment by a strange man riding a motorcycle. Ann wonders how Lep can do so well when his English is actually not very good.Īdding to her anxiety is the fact that her father is getting into trouble with his employer by trying to help the people (read poor and mostly immigrants) who live in the building in which he is employed. There is a boy in her class who is obviously an immigrant, but is doing surprisingly well with the practice tests. Ann is trying desperately to make sure she pass the senior XCAS in order to have a chance a better life. The working poor are at even more of a disadvantage. Ann and her family are barely surviving, even if both parents are working. Unless you have power and money, this American is no place for anyone. Set in an America in the future (one I do not think I would like living in) where testing determines what kind of a life high school graduates will live. The book cover caught my interest and I wanted to see if it was somewhat in the vein of Hunger Games. Although this novel Test, was written several years before, it may very well be of interest to readers who live survival type and changing society type novels.

It has been a number of years since I picked up a Sleator book. There is something to seeing “No Child Left Behind” treated like the Orwellian slogan it is, though. The story’s neatness makes it somewhat incoherent, is what I’m saying.

Even though journalism is corrupt and only interested in running slapfight stories. Add in a stereotypical rich bitch, daughter of the landlord/test king, not as pretty as the heroine and prone to making recordable threats, and you have the basis for a challenge to the whole system…. In a world where only the bubble test determines whether you’ll have a job that allows you to escape from the constant traffic (unless you’re in private school and don’t have to take the test) and whether your teachers will keep their own jobs, a young immigrant trades his complicity in unlawful and dangerous acts by a landlord in return for answers to the test meanwhile, his classmate is under threat because of her father’s acts to protect the tenants. House of Stairs was one of the creepiest YA books I ever read unfortunately, this recent Sleator didn’t do the same for me (though it’s possible that my tastes have changed).

Among the dolls by william sleator