Skip to main content

The Knife of Never Letting Go


Summary: 
Twelve year old Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown. There are no women or girls and Todd is the only male under the age of 12. Todd is told that when settlers landed, a germ took over that killed all the women. The men were not killed, but the germ made it so that all of their inner thoughts could be heard. Just before his thirteenth birthday, Todd learns that this is not completely true. The germ did not kill the women. In fact, women were unaffected by the Noise that plagued the men. As a result the men in Prentisstown killed all of the women and were cut off from the rest of the New World for their crime. When a girl crash lands outside Prentisstown, she and Todd set off to try to warn the rest of New World that Prentisstown has world domination in mind.

Strengths: 
The main strengths of this dystopian young adult novel lie in the plot's creativity. The settlers have discovered a world very similar to Earth but the idea of a native germ that has a detrimental but non fatal effect on humans is fresh and interesting. The information overload that exists in the book is parallel to the information overload present in today's society with the prevalence of the internet and smart phones. The action is fairly nonstop once Todd leaves Prentisstown. The main characters are easy to relate to and their motivations and decision making is complex. The plot twists and turns often leave the reader off balance and the ending leaves the reader wanting to read the two sequel books.

If you like this book, check out these!

 The Hunger Games
Ender's Game

 Ness, P. (2008). The knife of never letting go. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bloom's Taxonomy for a Digital Age

Bloom's Taxonomy. One of the things we are constantly hearing in our school is the push for increased rigor in our classroom, as a result of the STAAR tests and others like it becoming more rigorous. We are told to push for higher order thinking and questioning from our students. One of the tools we use to look at how we can increase rigor is Bloom's Taxonomy. But some things about Bloom's don't translate exactly when we are talking about the digital age and the classroom or library. For example, remembering is the lowest piece of the triangle for Bloom's, but remembering looks different when you have instant access to a powerful computer that can use essentially limitless online resources to find answers. I've mentioned to my husband just how much more this and future generations will know about the world around them simply because they no longer have to remember everything they're interested in knowing. If I pass a historical marker for a place I haven...
7 comments
Read more

Podcasting

I'm pretty lucky when it comes to podcasting. My husband, the Chainmail Ninja, is a hobbyist podcaster and professional book narrator so we have quite a recording setup in our home office. He worked in radio for 10+ years so he does the production side of things as well as the recording. I've tossed around the idea of contributing on his podcasts, which are mostly about geek culture and hobbies, but haven't had time to put this plan in action. But for today's blog post, I went ahead and made some time to create a podcast using our equipment. There are three main steps to creating a podcast. First, is the planning stage. Some podcasters prepare using various methods. Some research their topics, but don't do any other prep and speak mostly off the cuff. Many podcasters create a notes page to make sure they hit all the points they want to. Others create detailed scripts for their podcasts. The second step is recording the podcast. This can be done using the inter...
4 comments
Read more

Bloggin' It Up.

I'm a huge blog reader. I love learning and reading about others' perspectives and I find blogs to be a great way to be entertained or educated. When you follow a lot of blogs like I do, you are going to need a feed reader, or you're going to spend a lot of time checking for new blog posts that aren't up yet, or missing great reads because you stop checking. Back in the day, I used Google's RSS feed reader, which I loved. But Google did away with it, so it was off to shop for a new one. I now use Feedreader, which you can find here . It's simple. It's been around for a long time and it gets high ratings from other users. I'm not that picky as long as interfaces are generally intuitive, and Feedreader is a simple, barebones, feed reader that works. Now, when I started out reading blogs, it was an extension of reading Live Journals. I'm not sure how many of you remember LJ and it's darker cousin, Dead Journal. I had accounts at both and wrote the...
6 comments
Read more