Scythe

Hearing Neal Shusterman describe his new young adult novel Scythe was all the convincing I needed to buy it. I cleverly disguised my own interest in the book by suggesting to my wife it be a Christmas gift for my sixteen year old son. If you have a teenage son, you know just how difficult gift-giving occasions can be. She readily agreed sight unseen and I happily watched the book’s cover revealed on Christmas morning. I waited patiently until I was sure he finished it and, this past weekend, I finally opened the pages and started reading it myself.

I was an early Hunger Games reader, meaning, of course, I read the books before there was even talk of a movie. This book falls into the same category as Hunger Games with many of the same themes. I remember when similar books were described as being similar to The Giver. At what point did I start changing the benchmark book for this particular genre from The Giver to The Hunger Games? For whom did I change the reference? For myself? For students? For teachers?

Gleaning is the process given in Scythe for population control. The word is a kinder word than murder. I have been very reflective about this book and how I reference it with others since I started the book. How often have I gleaned my literary references and replaced them with more recent works? Is that how books fall away? One day you are in and the next day you are out?

Then, when I think my mind will explode, I remember what Neil Gaiman wrote after winning the Newbery Award for The Graveyard Book. He didn’t write the story to win an award. In fact, he was surprised the book won the Newbery because of the commercial success of the book. It was not an important book or socially relevant book. He wrote a good story for kids. That was all.

So all of my high brow fretting about literary references need to be forgotten. I need to read Scythe and enjoy it for what it was meant to be. It was not meant to be analyzed and dissected with, dare I say, a scythe. It was meant to read, enjoyed, and loved for being what it is. Oh, I will still compare it to The Hunger Games and to The Giver, but not at the expense of enjoying a good story.