Matched

I found this book to be the most enjoyable out of all of the books that I have read this semester – and I have read some pretty awesome books! I personally enjoy the dystopian genre, so this partly explains my favoritism. I also enjoyed Ally Condie’s writing style. The writing was not so complex that my struggling readers would have difficulty understanding it, yet also contained bountiful opportunities for higher-level thinking. The book contains many symbolic elements, opportunities to infer meanings and make predictions, literary allusions that could lead to exploration of other works, and includes many topics that students could connect to their own lives, current events, and other popular novels (such as Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, and The Giver). I can see teaching this novel alone, or as part of a larger thematic unit on dystopian literature. I can also imagine several writing assignments that could stem from topics covered in this book, such persuasive essays on banned books or censorship, arranged marriages, euthanasia, or having students create and defend a list of the 10 works that they think should be included in the Society’s 100 books, poems, movies or songs.