Dreambender by Ronald Kidd

Title: Dreambender
Author: Ronald Kidd 
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company  
Publication date: March 1, 2016
Pages: 256
Source/format: ARC from Publisher

Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Synopsis (from goodreads.com):

Everyone in the City is assigned a job by the choosers--keeper, catcher, computer. Callie Crawford is a computer. She works with numbers: putting them together, taking them apart. Her work is important, but sometimes she wants more. Jeremy Finn is a dreambender. His job is to adjust people's dreams. He and others like him quietly remove thoughts of music and art to keep the people in the City from becoming too focused on themselves and their own feelings rather than on the world. They need to keep the world safe from another Warming. But Jeremy thinks music is beautiful, and when he pops into a dream of Callie singing, he becomes fascinated with her. He begins to wonder if there is more to life than being safe. Defying his community and the role they have established for him, he sets off to find her in the real world. Together, they will challenge their world's expectations. But how far will they go to achieve their own dreams?

M Y  T H O U G H T S

Callie Crawford is a thirteen-year-old girl who is a Computer. As a Computer, she works with numbers, putting them together and taking them apart. Everyone in the City has a place in society. The Warming is a time when people relied on machines. However, machines are taboo to talk about and same goes for war, violence, art and music. Callie has always wondered what is beyond the City. She is curious about what life is like without so many rules. What if people can choose their own jobs?

Jeremy Finn who is a Dreambender who meets Callie in a dream. His job is to adjust people's memories to rid of music and art. To prevent another Warming, people must not focus on themselves individually and must focus on the City collectively. Dreambenders are raised in the Meadow, away from the City. They also cannot visit the City in person but they can visit the City in dreams.

Ronald Kidd does an excellent job writing a dystopian novel for the Middle Grade level. Most dystopians I have read are usually Young Adult ones. Dreambender definitely reminded me of The Giver and it's a definitely a book that will keep you thinking! The plot is simple and explores what it means to be a kid. Children are often curious about the world and when they don't receive an answer to their question, they will seek the answer out.

Dreambender focuses on facts over feelings more than most Dystopians. Everyone must abide to statistics and laws. Feelings are personal and shouldn't be expressed in forms of art, music, dance, etc. It's interesting to see concepts of individualism and collectivism in this novel. These two different principles can be seen today in different societies of the world.

With individualism, the individual's life belongs to the person. With collectivism, the individual's life belongs to the group or society. Individualism supports a person making his or her own decisions as he or she sees fit. They have a sense of choice. Collectivism is when a person will sacrifice his or her values in order to do what is for the greater good of the people as a whole. A person serves the society.

In Dreambender, we can see how some of the societies are collectivists while some are more individualists. Some people in the collectivist societies end up rebelling against collectivist thoughts and are thinking more like individualists.

The sentence structure is very simple and sometimes I feel like the language conveyed in the novel could be more complex for the Middle Grade level. This is more for young readers bridging from chapter books to Middle Grade in terms of reading difficulty. I highly recommend picking up Dreambender if you're looking for a quick Middle Grade dystopian read.

Top Ten Books I've Recently Added To My TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's Top Ten Tuesday asks bloggers to choose their top ten books they've recently added to their TBR. The following books are in no particular order. Most of the following are front list titles and I included synopsis for all ten along with the publication date and publisher.

1. The Way I Used to Be by Amber Smith - March 22, 2016 published by Simon & Schuster

In the tradition of Speak, this extraordinary debut novel shares the unforgettable story of a young woman as she struggles to find strength in the aftermath of an assault.

Eden was always good at being good. Starting high school didn’t change who she was. But the night her brother’s best friend rapes her, Eden’s world capsizes.

What was once simple, is now complex. What Eden once loved—who she once loved—she now hates. What she thought she knew to be true, is now lies. Nothing makes sense anymore, and she knows she’s supposed to tell someone what happened but she can’t. So she buries it instead. And she buries the way she used to be.

Told in four parts—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year—this provocative debut reveals the deep cuts of trauma. But it also demonstrates one young woman’s strength as she navigates the disappointment and unbearable pains of adolescence, of first love and first heartbreak, of friendships broken and rebuilt, and while learning to embrace a power of survival she never knew she had hidden within her heart.

2. Never Missing, Never Found by Amanda Panitch - June 28, 2016 published by Random House

A juicy thriller about a girl who returned from the missing. . . . Hand to fans of We Were Liars, Bone Gap, and Vanishing Girls.

Some choices change everything. Scarlett chose to run. And the consequences will be deadly.

Stolen from her family as a young girl, Scarlett was lucky enough to eventually escape her captor. Now a teen, she's starting a summer job at an amusement park. There are cute boys, new friends, and the chance to finally have a normal life.

Her first day on the job, Scarlett is shocked to discover that a girl from the park has gone missing. Old memories come rushing back. And now as she meets her new coworkers, one of the girls seems strangely familiar. When Scarlett chose to run all those years ago, what did she set into motion? And when push comes to shove, how far will she go to uncover the truth . . . before it's too late?

3. Dreambender by Ronald Kidd - March 1, 2016 published by Albert Whitman & Company

Everyone in the City is assigned a job by the choosers--keeper, catcher, computer. Callie Crawford is a computer. She works with numbers: putting them together, taking them apart. Her work is important, but sometimes she wants more. Jeremy Finn is a dreambender. His job is to adjust people's dreams. He and others like him quietly remove thoughts of music and art to keep the people in the City from becoming too focused on themselves and their own feelings rather than on the world. They need to keep the world safe from another Warming. But Jeremy thinks music is beautiful, and when he pops into a dream of Callie singing, he becomes fascinated with her. He begins to wonder if there is more to life than being safe. Defying his community and the role they have established for him, he sets off to find her in the real world. Together, they will challenge their world's expectations. But how far will they go to achieve their own dreams?

4. Black Bird go the Gallows by Meg Kassel - 2016 published by Egmont

A debut novel about a teenage girl who discovers the new boy next door is a harbinger of death, and who must find a way to survive in a town destined for destruction.

A simple but forgotten truth: Where harbingers of death appear, the morgues will soon be full. Harbingers settle in places where tragedy is about to strike, then feed on the energy of the dying. Then, they leave. Off to the next doomed place. No one wants a family of harbingers of death as neighbors, but that’s exactly what seventeen-year-old Angie Dovage gets when Reece Fernandez moves in next door.

Angie knows the mysterious boy is more than he appears, but can’t imagine that his presence heralds a tragedy that will devastate her small community. But her fears run deeper than Reece’s inevitable departure, because where harbingers of death go, grotesque, ruined creatures called Beekeepers follow. And where Beekeepers go, fear and chaos and death follows.

Angie wants to protect everyone she cares about, but stopping the Beekeepers involves a choice that will claim her life or Reece’s soul. She will learn the price of both.

5. The Flame Never Dies by Rachel Vincent, August 16, 2016 published by Random House

For fans of Cassandra Clare and Richelle Mead comes the unputdownable sequel to The Stars Never Rise, a book Rachel Caine, author of the bestselling Morganville Vampires series, called “haunting, unsettling, and eerily beautiful.”

ONE SPARK WILL RISE. Nina Kane was born to be an exorcist. And since uncovering the horrifying truth—that the war against demons is far from over—seventeen-year-old Nina and her pregnant younger sister, Mellie, have been on the run, incinerating the remains of the demon horde as they go.

In the badlands, Nina, Mellie, and Finn, the fugitive and rogue exorcist who saved her life, find allies in a group of freedom fighters. They also face a new threat: Pandemonia, a city full of demons. But this fresh new hell is the least of Nina’s worries. The well of souls ran dry more than a century ago, drained by the demons secretly living among humans, and without a donor soul, Mellie’s child will die within hours of its birth.

Nina isn’t about to let that happen . . . even if it means she has to make the ultimate sacrifice.

6. The Stars Never Rise by Rachel Vincent - June 9, 2015 published by Random House

Sixteen-year-old Nina Kane should be worrying about her immortal soul, but she's too busy trying to actually survive. Her town's population has been decimated by soul-consuming demons, and souls are in short supply. Watching over her younger sister, Mellie, and scraping together food and money are all that matters. The two of them are a family. They gave up on their deadbeat mom a long time ago.

When Nina discovers that Mellie is keeping a secret that threatens their very existence, she'll do anything to protect her. Because in New Temperance, sins are prosecuted as crimes by the brutal Church and its army of black-robed exorcists. And Mellie's sin has put her in serious trouble.

To keep them both alive, Nina will need to trust Finn, a fugitive with deep green eyes who has already saved her life once and who might just be an exorcist. But what kind of exorcist wears a hoodie?

Wanted by the Church and hunted by dark forces, Nina knows she can't survive on her own. She needs Finn and his group of rogue friends just as much as they need her.

7. Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum - April 6, 2016 by Random House

Julie Buxbaum mixes comedy and tragedy, love and loss, pain and elation, in her debut YA novel whose characters will come to feel like friends. Tell Me Three Things will appeal to fans of Rainbow Rowell, Jennifer Niven, and E. Lockhart.

Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that’s what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help?

It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son.

In a leap of faith—or an act of complete desperation—Jessie begins to rely on SN, and SN quickly becomes her lifeline and closest ally. Jessie can’t help wanting to meet SN in person. But are some mysteries better left unsolved?

8. The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson - May 3, 2016 by Simon & Schuster

Andie had it all planned out.
When you are a politician’s daughter who’s pretty much raised yourself, you learn everything can be planned or spun, or both. Especially your future.

Important internship? Check.

Amazing friends? Check.

Guys? Check (as long as we’re talking no more than three weeks)

But that was before the scandal. Before having to be in the same house with her dad. Before walking an insane number of dogs. That was before Clark and those few months that might change her whole life.

Because here’s the thing - if everything's planned out, you can never find the unexpected. And where’s the fun in that?

9. Replica by Lauren Oliver - September 27, 2016 by HarperCollins

Replica, the first of the two books, tells the story of Lyra, known by the number 24, a replica – human model – who was born, raised, and observed in a clandestine research facility called the Haven Institute. When Lyra escapes from Haven and meets Gemma, a stranger on a quest of her own, earth-shattering secrets are revealed.

10. Flawed by Cecelia Ahern - April 5, 2016 published by Macmillan 

The Scarlet Letter meets Divergent in this thoughtful and thrilling novel by bestselling author Cecelia Ahern.

Celestine North lives a perfect life. She's a model daughter and sister, she's well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she's dating the impossibly charming Art Crevan.

But then Celestine encounters a situation where she makes an instinctive decision. She breaks a rule. And now faces life-changing repercussions.

She could be imprisoned. She could be branded. She could be found FLAWED.

In her breathtaking young adult debut, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern depicts a society where obedience is paramount and rebellion is punished. And where one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her-everything.

Are there any books listed above that you're excited for? What books did you recently add to your TBR?