What Happened to Serenity?

by PJ Sarah Collins
Red Deer Press
978-0-889954-53-3
222 pp.
Ages 12-15
2011

Nominated for the 2012 Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy, the first year this book prize is being presented, What Happened to Serenity? by PJ Sarah Collins could have been nominated for the Mystery Award as its title suggests.  But that brilliant title alludes to more than the disappearance of Serenity, the younger sister of our protagonist's best friend.  Serenity also seems to be missing from the Community in which fifteen-year-old Katherine and her family live, under the administration of Father.  And one of the key reasons for the distress in Katherine's life is the strict rule, according to the Manifesto, that only Father is allowed to ask questions.  For all other Brothers and Sisters in the Community, it is considered rude to question - anything.  But Katherine, who has great difficulty rephrasing her questions into statements, wants to know, "What Happened to Serenity?"

After the Ecological Revolution of 1979, Father had brought one hundred abandoned babies and fifty Aunts and Uncles to the safety of Community.  Beyond the borders, the environment is poor and unstable, the water irradiated, the air poison. Now in 2021, the Community adheres to the strict dictates for attaining a perfect society.  Since colour is reflective of selfish individualism, Community is Brown, everywhere.  Life Roles are distributed based on compliance and performance.  And no questioning is allowed.  A sense of peacefulness and calm is only a click away on the Remote.

But Katherine cannot reconcile what she is told and what she observes, especially after discovering a note with "the words that changed my life." (pg. 70)

Everything is not as it seems. 
I've seen the outside come  
Through the sky.      (pg. 7)

When her snooping reveals documents with her family's "Retinal Scan Weekly Diagnostic Informational Scores", notes about a recent medical visit, and a shipments and inventory schedule, Katherine is determined to break the rules to ensure the safety of her family and to see beyond the Community.

The reader will not be prepared for the about-face that What Happened to Serenity? takes.  And though I thought that the ease with which Katherine gets support from Paul seemed somewhat contrived, PJ Sarah Collins ensures that Katherine's interactions with the outsiders are not all promising; in fact, too soon Katherine will be questioning her actions.

"I have let the bear into their home and it will destroy everything in its wide-angle view." (pg. 211)

What Happened to Serenity? is a title I will add promptly to my #CanLitChoices alternatives for The Giver.  It is a perfect youngCanLit example of a dystopian story in which the themes of courage, responsibility, oppression and intolerance, authority and power, and community are interwoven into a powerful plot embedded with real characters who all believe that what they are doing is right.  It's unfortunate that those with the power over others do not realize that they alone have doomed their utopia to become what it is - dysfunctional.  What Happened to Serenity? is a cautionary tale worthy of reading as well as heeding.

#CanLitChoices: "The Giver" alternatives

The Giver
Written by Lois Lowry
Bantam Books
179 pp.
Ages 11–14
RL 5.9
1993

This novel, winner of countless book awards including the Newbery Award, the School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and the William Allen White Award, is a favourite novel used in the intermediate grades, usually Grades 7 or 8.  Written at RL 5.9 (this means a child should be able to read this at the ninth month of Grade 5), The Giver is often considered science fiction, although we would most likely consider it dystopian now.

The themes of the book include the following:

• authority/power
• community
• oppression/intolerance
• responsibility
• courage

The following youngCanLit focuses on dystopian societies and would serve beautifully as updated and alternative novels to The Giver.  For each, I have looked at the key themes of The Giver in terms of the youngCanLit selection.

All Good Children

Written by Catherine Austen

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-55469-824-0

300 pp.

Ages 14+

2011

• Authority/Power: Chemrose International, which implements the NEST program
• Community:  New Middleton, owned by Chemrose, is a gated community free of environmental disasters that trouble the shanty towns outside its gates
• Oppression/Intolerance: genetic status (e.g., ultimate, best-of-three, throwaway), deformed adults (due to chemical contamination), troublemakers
• Responsibility: to accept mandatory vaccinations, to protect the children and others from harm, Max keeping Ally and Xavier safe after they are vaccinated
• Courage: to evade the vaccinations, to help those debilitated by the vaccinations, to escape and help others escape

Ashes, Ashes

Written by Jo Treggiari
Scholastic Press
978-0-545-25563-9
341 pp.
Ages 12+
2011

• Authority/Power: Sweepers under the direction of Dr. Lessing and the doctors at Roosevelt Island
• Community:  the co-operative group of farmers, hunters, and scavengers that live in The Hell Gate
• Oppression/Intolerance: S'ans (scarred survivors of the plague), the uninfected 
• Responsibility: to rescue friends captured by the Sweepers
  
• Courage: to survive alone in Central Park, to evade the hazard squads of Sweepers, to accept the S'ans, to join The Hell Gate community, to trust Aidan

Blood Red Road

Written by Moira Young

Doubleday Canada

978-0-385-67183-5

459 pp.

Ages 14+

2011

• Authority/Power: the King who rules through his police, the TonTon 
• Community: the palisaded and gated city of Hopetown, the Free Hawks in Darktrees, the former society of Wreckers 
• Oppression/Intolerance: slaves, people high on chaal, cage-fighters, Free Hawks
• Responsibility: to keep a promise to find Lugh, to keep family together, to protect Emmi 
• Courage: to search for Lugh, to leave the isolation of Silverlake and venture to Hopetown, to endure the cage-fighting, to return to save Jack from the fire, to shorten Epona's death, to go on to the Big Water in the West

 

  

Eye of the Wolf

Written by Troon Harrison

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

299 pp.

Ages 14+

2003

• Authority/Power: the Governing Corporation, Coalition of Southern Alliance Nations
• Community: different communities of the North and South
• Oppression/Intolerance: needy Northerners, illegals, refugees, sugar-friends, promise-fathers
• Responsibility: to find Chandra's kidnapped mother, to keep others in the North safe from a secret plot to infect them with a fatal virus
• Courage: to rescue her mother, to rescue a wolf pup, to stand up to Hernandez, to cross the border illegally without papers 

Flux

Written by Beth Goobie

Orca Book Publishers

258 pp.

Ages 12-16

2004

• Authority/Power: Interior Police who seek control through thought
• Community: the controlled caste-system of the Interior vs. the anarchic Outback community
• Oppression/Intolerance: those who have been chipped, those who worship the Goddess Ivanka, Outback community
• Responsibility: of mothers to their children, Deller wanting to save his brother
• Courage: to escape to the Outback, to resist the thought police, to become self-sufficient, for self-determination, to endure experimentation, to evade capture

Hunted

Written by Cheryl Rainfield

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-226-9

316 pp.

Ages 13+

2012

• Authority/Power: Government of Normals who use torture and propaganda to oppress the Paranormals
• Community: of Normals and Paranormals, built on fear of each other
• Oppression/Intolerance:  Paranormals with a diversity of gifts such as telepathy, telekinesis, etc., Para-lovers, Para-sympatizers, Para-supporters
  
• Responsibility: to register if a Para, to help Paras to evade detection, to educate Normals about Paras, to save those who are innocent, to risk their own lives for those they love
• Courage: to evade detection, to endure torture, to stand up for what is right, to surrender when necessary, to trust in others, to love unconditionally

A Teacher's Guide (.pdf) for Hunted is available at Cheryl Rainfield's website.

 

 

What Happened to Serenity?
Written by PJ Sarah Collins
Red Deer Press
978-0-889954-53-3
222 pp.
Ages 12-15
2011

• Authority/Power: Father, leader of the Community, is the only one who can ask questions
• Community: All members, except Father, are called Sisters and Brothers
• Oppression/Intolerance:  Those who ask questions are punished, with warnings, humiliation and ultimately less-than-favourable Life Roles
  
• Responsibility: Katherine feels the need to determine what has happened to Serenity, her best friend's little sister; Katherine feels that she must help her younger brother to not ask questions to prevent him from disappearing too
• Courage: Katherine is determined to see what is beyond the Community so that she might find out what happened to Serenity, even though she has been punished for her curiosity

Leave comments if you have any other suggestions for The Giver alternatives or to select an age-old novel that needs refreshing with #CanLitChoices.