Among the Hidden

Among the Hidden is the book I read for this book report. It has 153 pages and it is fiction. The book takes place on a farm over a one-year time period from late summer to late spring. We don't know the exact year, but it is sometime in the future. It is here in the US, but it just doesn't seem like it could be since things happen in the book that just don't seem imaginable to us.

The story is about a boy named Luke. He is a shadow child. A shadow child is a third (or even more) child in a family that must stay hidden because it was against the population law to have more than two children. The government thought there was too little food for everyone; therefore, they made this population law. If a third child was found, they would be shot on the spot. This is why Luke stayed hidden in the attic; it was too dangerous to come out and risk being seen. Luke had two older brothers that got to go to school and play with their friends. He would watch them go off to school everyday through a vent in the attic. They made fun of Luke all the time, but he still loved them.

Then one day as he was watching his brothers and everyone else in the neighborhood go off to school and work, he saw movement. It was in a house where the parents and two sons had already left for the day. After wondering for about a week what he should do, he finally decided to sneak over to the house. This is when he found Jen, another shadow child. After a lot of explaining and telling each other's stories, Luke and Jen became best friends. Since Jen's parents were Barons (Barons were very wealthy people), she had many things that Luke had never seen before.

What I really liked about the book is how Luke risked everything to visit Jen. He knew that if anyone saw him that he would be killed. While visiting Jen one day, he learned of her plan to have a rally for the shadow children's rights. She thought it was cool to see how Luke reacted to all of the things she had. Luke had never eaten junk food, or watched TV, and he definitely didn't know what a computer was. His family was poor and did not have any of these luxuries.

The lesson learned in this book is to fight for what you believe in and that everyone should be treated equally. Jen wanted equality for all the shadow children so much that she was willing to die for it. She and about 40 other shadow children marched onto the Capitol lawn to protest. After that, Luke never