Product Description

"Of course, without people like us Marstens, there wouldn't be anybody to do the manual labor that makes this country run. Without penal workers, who would work the production lines, or pick the melons and peaches, or maintain the streets and parks and public lavatories? Our economy depends on prison labor. Without it everybody would have to work -- whether they wanted to or not."

In the late twenty-first century Bo Marsten is unjustly accused of a causing a rash that plagues his entire high school. He loses it, and as a result, he's sentenced to work in the Canadian tundra, at a pizza factory that's surrounded by hungry polar bears. Bo finds prison life to be both boring and dangerous, but it's nothing compared to what happens when he starts playing on the factory's highly illegal football team. In the meantime, Bork, an artificial intelligence that Bo created for a science project, tracks Bo down in prison. Bork has spun out of control and seems to be operating on his own. He offers to get Bo's sentence shortened, but can Bo trust him? And now that Bo has been crushing skulls on the field, will he be able to go back to his old, highly regulated life?

Pete Hautman takes a satirical look at an antiseptic future in this darkly comic mystery/adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1540773 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-23
• Released on: 2006-05-23
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .93" h x 6.38" w x 8.44" l, .75 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up–In 2076 in the United Safer States of America, verbal abuse, obesity, and dangerous activities are against the law. Helmets and health food are de rigueur, and sports are either outlawed or radically changed (runners' track times have slowed appreciably because of the bulky safety equipment required). The penalty for breaking any of the rules is a lengthy prison term, and 24 percent of the population is incarcerated and responsible for doing much of the country's manual labor–without pay. For Bo Marsten, 16, the punishment for allegedly spreading a rash through school is a prison sentence, which is suspended, but he then goes to jail for lack of self-control after he hits a classmate. Bo has the opportunity to reduce his sentence when he's chosen for the prison's (illegal) football team, but the sadistic coach is determined that his players win at any cost. This odd pairing of satire and sports thriller is carried along by the protagonist's confident narrative voice. The angry teen is struggling to explore his options in a world that has little concern for his emotional well-being. The satire is obvious but astute, and Bo's development is convincing. The many threads that run through this book may overwhelm some readers, but there is much for them to ponder and the overall effect is fresh.–Sarah Couri, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Providing as many voices as there are characters, Andy Paris's skilled narration effortlessly leads the listener through this dystopic science fiction story. In 2076 in the United Safer States of America, having a temper is a serious problem. Bo Marsden is sentenced to three years in a prison work camp for having one fight too many. From the fights on the high school grounds to the illegal football games on the frozen tundra at the work camp, listeners will be glued to their seats to learn the next turn of events. All the while, Paris's smooth, vivid style keeps pace with the fast-paced action and dramatic story line. K.T.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gr. 9-12. It's very likely that the world has never seen a sports novel quite like this one, which evokes Louis Sachar's Holes (1998), M. T. Anderson's Feed (2004), and Chris Lynch's explorations of male aggression in Inexcusable (2005), all the while avoiding the merest whisper of predictability. In the United Safer States of America of the late twenty-first century, a national obsession with safety has criminalized even minor "antisocial impulses." Bo's dad "was put away in '73 for roadrage"; the teen's own anger issues likewise land him in one of the country's privatized penal colonies. There, he makes pizzas for McDonald's until the camp's sadistic overseer recruits him to play football. The illegal sport is brutally violent but exhilarating--and Bo, a gifted athlete, slowly begins to question his culture's basic assumptions, identifying with crotchety Gramps' view that "the country went to hell the day we decided we'd rather be safe than free." At times, Hautman takes his signature eclecticism to an extreme, placing Bo in confrontations with polar bears, an intrusive artificial intelligence entity, and officials who suspect him of causing a rash outbreak. Like the author's similarly audacious Godless (2004), though, this will satisfy teens with an appetite for big questions and gleeful ambiguities, while ratcheting up the mind-trip factor with a gimlet-eyed extrapolation of the future. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved