The book I would like to tell you about is called Among the Hidden. The author of this book is Margaret Peterson Haddix. In this book, there is a boy named Luke Garner who has never been able to leave his backyard. He has only been able to quickly peak through blinds for fear of being seen. Until the day the workers started cutting the trees down, Luke was able to experience a little fresh air while rough-housing with his brothers in their isolated backyard farmland. The reason for this is because of the population law. The government believed that there wasn’t enough food to feed the growing population, so they made the law that there is only a maximum of two children allowed in each family.
That meant that Luke was an illegal third child. He had spent his whole life hiding from the population police. Since the government forced the Garners to sell a lot of their farmland for building houses, Luke had to stay inside, because now that the trees were being cut down he had a huge chance of being seen in his backyard. Luke spent most of his days in the attic where his room was. He found some little vents in the wall that he could look out of and see the people that moved into the big, fancy houses. One day, he noticed somebody peeking out of the house next door, even after he knew that everybody in that family had left. He knew this because he kept a little record on the wall and marked down when the people of each family came and left. He even knew how many people there were in each family. That person peeking out of the window didn’t belong there.
I was sad when I found out that Jen, the girl that had lived next door to Luke, had died in her rally for trying to give illegal third children a right to live. She had gathered about 40 other third children to come, but they had all gotten shot by government officials (p. ). Before Luke found out that Jen had died, he had snuck into her house like he usually did for their secret meetings. The alarm went off and he disabled it like Jen had taught him to. Once he got into the third children chat room that Jen had created, the front door to the house burst open and Jen’s dad stepped in. Jen’s dad, Luke later found out, worked for the population police (p. ), the people that, without prior notice, barge into people’s houses and make sure there are no illegal third children living there. He was on the third children’s side, though. He offered to get Luke a fake I.D. and send him to a boarding school for boys, and Luke accepted. I felt really sorry for Luke because he would never be able to see his family again. The people who had raised Luke would never be in his life again. Luke probably missed his mother especially, because she was the one that would always sit down with Luke in the attic and talk to him and comfort him. Also, the day he was going to the school, Luke’s mother had made him two eggs for breakfast, which she had to work 40 extra hours for in the factory (p. ).
I can’t really understand the part when Luke snuck into Jen’s house for the first time and she tackled him (p. ). As Jen was tackling Luke, Luke yelled out “Population Police!” and Jen immediately stopped tackling him and got off. She automatically knew Luke was a third child then. She said, “That’s a good one. I should use that as a code sometime.” (p. ). Later on, I never found out what any of that had to do with the story. I also didn’t know how Jen automatically knew that Luke was a third child when he said that. If I were Luke in this story, I wouldn’t have accepted the fake I.D. That meant that he got to use a dead child’s name and pretend that he’s him. The dead child’s name was Lee Grant. That’s who Luke had to pretend to be (p. ). That meant he wasn’t able to live with his family anymore. I wouldn’t have liked it, knowing that I no longer existed and I was living the life of somebody else. I would have also not have been able to leave my family after living with them for 12 years, let alone any other amount of years. He didn’t even cry, either. That’s a little unbelievable.
The word “angry” makes me think of the character named Jen. She was very angry about the fact that third children were illegal. She believed they had as much of a right to live as everybody else (p. ). She located a ton of third children that existed and made a chat room for them to all talk to each other and plan the rally. If somebody would disagree or not take the rally seriously, she would go into one of her furious talks about how strongly she believed that the government was stupid to pass that law (p. ). She was desperate for Luke to join the rally, too, but he was too afraid and she got mad at him. She asked him how he would feel if he was sitting in his room and then found out that third children weren’t illegal anymore because of the rally and how he would feel guilty if he didn’t do anything to help it (p. ). Luke still didn’t give in and so she told him to get out of her sight. Later that night, though, before the day of the rally, she apologized and said she hoped the rally would be a success. She ended up having too much faith in her fellow third children friends, because only forty showed up.
I would definitely recommend this book who would like a sad story and exciting story mixed together into one amazing book. This book was almost flawless in description of emotions and experiences. This story kept me interested the whole time and it was hard to put down. I read it as often as I could because I wanted to find out what would happen to Luke and his family next. This author made up a very exciting plot that many people do worry about in real life due to the world’s growing population. You can tell that this author has a very good imagination and is just as good as putting it into words.
