Among the Hidden
Margaret Peterson Haddix (1998)
“In a world where third children are illegal, a boy hidden in an attic discovers he is not as alone as he believed.”
At a Glance
Luke Garner is a third child in a society where families are limited to two children by the Population Law. After spending his entire life hidden from the Population Police, Luke discovers a neighboring girl named Jen Talbot who is also an illegal third child. Jen organizes a rally of shadow children to demand their rights, but the rally ends in massacre. Luke, devastated by Jen's death, obtains a fake identity from Jen's father and steps into the outside world for the first time, beginning a new life as Lee Grant.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Among the Hidden is widely credited with helping establish young adult dystopian fiction as a serious literary category before The Hunger Games (2008) and Divergent (2011) made the genre a publishing phenomenon. The novel demonstrated that dystopian themes — government surveillance, identity erasure, political resistance — could be rendered accessible to readers as young as ten without sacrificing intellectual complexity. It has sold millions of copies and remains a staple of middle-school curricula across the United States.
Diction Profile
Informal to moderate — plain vocabulary suited to middle-school readers, with occasional political and philosophical register in dialogue
Low