Nasty Future for Naughty Boys
“Living with hope is like rubbing up against a cheese grater. It keeps taking slices off you until there’s so little left, you just crumble.”
Quick-witted, prank-pulling graffiti artist Maxwell Connors is more observant than the average New Middletown teenager. And he doesn’t like what he sees. New Middletown’s children are becoming frighteningly obedient, and their parents and teachers couldn’t be happier. As Max and his friend Dallas watch their classmates transform into model citizens, Max wonders if their only hope of freedom lies in the unknown world beyond New Middletown’s walls, where creativity might be a gift instead of a liability.
For those who like their dystopias with a rich character sauce and a side of humour.
- Teen Fiction (ages 12+); 312 pages; hardcover, paperback, and ebook editions
- Themes: friendship, responsibility, social control, dystopia
“Action packed, terrifying, and believable, this entertaining novel will provoke important discussions about subservience, resistance, and individual freedom.” – Booklist
To purchase a copy of All Good Children:
- visit your local bookstore (find one at Indie Store Finder);
- buy online from Amazon-Canada, Amazon-USA, Chapters, Barnes & Noble;
- order directly from the publisher, Orca; or
- order an ebook with a soundtrack through Booktrack.
Catherine Austen 
Hey, just wanted to say this book’s amazing. I’m even doing a book report.( The teacher gave my class permission to make a book report of any book. I chose this book, but I didn’t mention any of the “explicit” language used haha) You should write more teenage books please.
Thanks, Leo! (For liking the book and for taking the time to tell me – that just makes my day.) I will write more teenage books for sure – I just take a long time to do things. Maybe I’ll try to rein in my language in the next one. 🙂
How has social control negatively affected the character in the book?
Alas, you’ll have to answer that question on your own. (I wrote the book; someone else can write the English assignments.) Best of luck.
I have loved this book from the first time I picked it up a few years ago. I just finished rereading it, and I love it even more. It is thought-provoking and inspiring and deserves so much love and appreciation. It is, much like max’s tent, a work of art.
Wow, that is such a nice thing to hear, as an author. Thank you so much for saying so. It’s a marvellous thing, writing a book that touches a stranger. 🙂
I’m trying to build a proposal as we speak so that I can write about this book for my assignment for my Eugenics class. I read it over 8 years ago and it’s stuck with me till now! Thank you so much for writing this amazing story<3
Thanks, Britney. That’s wonderful to hear. Eugenics class? Wow. That would be interesting. (I hope it’s a history class. :-))
what are some family and friends help the characters in the novel withstand the problems they face
Hi i’m doing a school assignment on you and I need to find out what was or is your inspiration for writing this book. ive been trying to researching this topic for a while now and I cant find anything about it. I also need to find they key life events in your life that led to you becoming a writing and shaped you’re hand writing. I know this is an old book but if you can answer this it would be very helpful
Hi ME. This is an old book, and I no longer have links to old interviews that might answer your question. So here’s an answer off the top of my head:
Inspiration: I wanted to write a “Stepford Wives” type of book for kids. (That’s an old sci-fi novel about men who replace their wives with robots.) I initially planned to write it as a middle-grade novel. Then some personal and public issues added to that idea (one of my kids got in trouble at school and the administration’s first question was had I considered ADHD medication, though he didn’t have ADHD; at the same time, I read a news story about a school board in the US that successfully sued some parents to make them medicate their child who did have an ADHD diagnosis). These things swayed me toward medication, older kids, and the sorts of kids that teachers might want to medicate for “good” behaviour. And I was dealing with a parent’s conflicted emotions about wanting your kid to be “successful” while wanting them to be authentic and happy, and feelings of betrayal that go with that (betrayal is my absolutely most dreaded but also favourite subject in human relations.)…
So that was my inspiration. I had some plot and characters in mind before I began — Xavier, the little sister, a mom, and a pair of central friends — but the main character of Max really grew by writing in his voice; he’s not at all the kid I had in mind when I started writing it. He continually surprised me. (That’s the most fun thing about writing, all the stuff that feels like it comes from somewhere that’s not me.)
As for events in my life leading me to write? I excelled in English at school but I didn’t study it in university, though I took all my electives in English and Classics. I was especially interested in the ways that stories are in a sense rewritten, recreated, as they are read. For a final project in an English Lit class, I wrote one story in two different styles (different narrative voice, point of view, diction, etc., one traditional and one experimental) and I interviewed a group of readers about what they remembered from the two stories. It was a superfun fascinating project. But the point relevant to your question is that my professor really liked the experimental story I’d written and suggested I try to publish it. So I sent it to a literary magazine and they published it. (I didn’t realize that this was super-lucky.) Over the years as a student and while working, I wrote more stories and had more published (and many rejected, too). When I had kids, I read so many great kids’ books to them that I wanted to try writing for kids. And I was super-lucky again to have several books published.
Now I’m back to writing short stories. That’s what I’m procrastinating on while replying to this comment. I’m trying to finish a collection of short stories about aging, and I better get back to it. 🙂 I hope this answer is useful. Best of luck with your assignment.
hope you’re having a good day! just wanted to say that this is one of my favorite books ever. I first found it a couple years ago and now i reread it every few months. in fact, it’s one of the main inspirations for my own writing, and whenever somebody asks me for recommendations this is the first one I bring up.
That’s so nice to read, Topher. Thank you! That’s the best effect a book can have, to inspire someone to write more stories that move them. All the best. 🙂