Let’s talk about dystopia book clubs, a compelling unit option for ELA.
I taught my first dystopian fiction, 1984, to tenth graders in Bulgaria. They had very strong reactions to the way Orwell portrayed communism, since Communist rule had existed in their family’s living memories. For some, Orwell nailed it. Others, outraged, clearly thought he was slandering their country’s history. For everyone, the line between fiction and fact in the text felt blurry. Perhaps because of its intensity, its emotional nature, its closeness to actual events, they found it didn’t read as fiction.
Thinking back, I’d now say they felt it was fiction with an agenda. Fiction with a clear argument that used evidence like characterization, setting, tone, and mood to drive home its thesis.
That experience has flavored the way I’ve read all the dystopia I’ve picked up since – Fahrenheit 451, The Hunger Games, Scythe, Dry…
And I think it leads to fascinating questions to bring to kids. How does dystopia wield its influence? Where is the line between art and propaganda? What do dystopian authors have in their writing arsenal that other authors don’t?
Today I hope to convince you that dystopian book clubs are worth your time, and give you the building blocks to design your unit. We’re going to talk texts, activities, and assessment possibilities.
Dystopian Book Clubs: Text Options
First things first, let’s talk about dystopian book club text options. Before we dive in, I have to say, as usual, remember to preview book choices to make sure they are a good fit for your community. Many dystopian novels contain mature themes and violence as part of their nature.
When it comes to dystopia, there are a few classics and a LOT of popular contemporary options. For middle school, Animal Farm and The Giver (in both print and graphic novel forms) are frequent go-tos. I would add Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth as a new possibility in the more literary options. For high school, you’ve got a few more options in terms of literary texts, like Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and The Marrow Thieves (you’ll want to provide context about the tragedy of Canadian residential schools if you choose this book). For both groups, there is a wealth of more recent highly compelling YA fiction, like The Hunger Games, Uglies, Scythe, and Divergent. Plus Dry and The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes for the older set.
Depending on your class, you can either provide both literary fiction and YA options within your book clubs, letting kids self-select for their topic and level of challenge, you can focus on one or the other entirely, or you can work through the literary fiction in book clubs while simultaneously showcasing the more contemporary texts in your book trailer Tuesdays, First Chapter Fridays, and choice reading displays.
How to Start: Defining Dystopia
One fun way to hook students and get them thinking about how to define dystopia is to show them some dystopian film trailers before launching your book clubs, and ask them to be watching for what makes dystopia dystopia. Suggest that they watch for plot elements, setting, and mood as they view the trailers, jotting down characteristics for each before your discussion. There are SO many film trailers you could use for this. Here are just a few.
Dystopian Film Trailer: The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Dystopian Film Trailer: The Truman Show
Dystopian Film Trailer: The Giver
Dystopian Film Trailer: Fahrenheit 451
Dystopian Film Trailer: Divergent
After you watch several trailers together, have kids come up with a definition of dystopia in pairs or small groups. Ask them to consider plot, setting, and mood in their definition. Eventually, come up with a class definition you can put up on the board or on a big piece of paper to keep up throughout your club unit.
The Book Tasting
Once you’ve got students thinking about dystopia, you’re ready to reveal your book choice. Now’s the time for a book tasting, a topic we’ve covered around here quite a bit before. You know the drill – put up a fun sign to welcome them to your room, play some themed music, scatter the book options onto tables around the room, and invite students to explore and jot down ratings and details about each book before signing up for their first and second choices.
Once you’ve held your book tasting and students have their text and their books, you’re ready to rock and roll with this unit.
Scheduling Dystopian Book Clubs
Book clubs provide for choice and independence, which is great, but they can also get stale, which is not. To avoid that feeling of “oh, book club meetings AGAIN” I want to suggest you spread out your book club meetings to two or three times a week. This will give students time to do a significant chunk of reading in between meetings, rather than trying to “cover” snippets every day. Plus, it will give you time to continue with other priorities in between, like advancing your writing curriculum, pursuing genius hour projects, taking time for choice reading, working on speaking skills through podcasting, or whatever you’re focused on.
Give students time in their very first meeting to assign their own reading across the meetings you’re planning to hold. Let them know which days you’ll have meetings and for how many weeks, so they know how to break it up.
Share the Question: How does dystopia wield influence?
If, like me, you find the idea that dystopia, as a genre, provides a unique opportunity for an author to present an argument through fiction, you might want to bring up the question of how dystopia wields influence early on. These two commercials – one from Apple, one from Motorola, can help stir up debate. Before you share them with students, ask them to consider: How are these companies using dystopia to further their brand messages?
Apple’s Commercial with Dystopian Themes:
Motorola Answers Back with their own Dystopian Setting:
After watching these commercials, you could have students discuss questions like these:
What does it mean to try to INFLUENCE someone?
What books/movies/podcasts/pieces of art have you explored that influenced the way you think about the world? Choose one or two to explain.
What is propaganda?
How can you tell the difference between art that seeks to influence, marketing, and propaganda?
What do do During Dystopia Book Club Meetings
OK, so your students have their texts, their reading schedule, their dystopia definitions, and a question prickling in the back of their mind – how does dystopia wield influence? It’s time for the meetings!
Figuring out how to run book club meetings can feel tricky. The strict roles of literature circles are limiting in some ways, but you don’t necessarily want to just let kids have free rein to “talk about the book.” Sure, some kids can handle that, but others may struggle. You know your class best, and the level of scaffolding they need. I suggest you set up meetings with a combination of three elements: some kind of discussion warm-up, open time to talk about the book (inspired by the discussion warm up for those who need that scaffolding), and some specific activities to help kids explore dystopian themes.
Let’s start with the warm-ups.
Warm-ups can be any way to get students started thinking back over the reading and preparing for discussion.
Maybe on the day of the meeting you feel they’d benefit from closely examining the setting of their dystopia. For a warm-up, you might talk about setting a little bit, ask everyone in the groups to sketch a map of the setting (working together or on their own), labeling important areas and adding in a couple of descriptive quotations. Then when you turn things over to a more free form conversation, everyone has given some thought to setting and can start the conversation there. Maybe you put a question on the board like “How does the setting contribute to the argument/influence of the text?” and ask them to start there.
Discussion warm-ups allow you to provide some direction, and also to hit on any key points/mini-lessons you want to include in your book clubs, while also paving the way for an independent conversation. There are a million options!
Next, let’s look at some possible activities.
Dystopian Book Clubs: Collage Activity
Let’s start with a collage activity, in which students connect headlines and visuals from our own reality to the key issue they see illustrated in their dystopian book club choice. This is a chance for them to further consider the question of influence, as they decide how to portray what they are reading in a visual way and what mood they hope to create as a reflection of the text.
For a collage project, you can easily use a digital program like Canva (or even Slides) so that students can screenshot the headlines, photos, graphics, infographics, cartoons, etc. that they want to use and drop them in, perhaps creating a simple list of links for their sources, since they aren’t really doing research so much as creating a visual illustration of the influence around a certain issue in their dystopian text.
Dystopian Book Clubs: Dismaland Exploration
Another activity to help students consider the idea of influence around dystopia is to spend time exploring Banksy’s temporary dystopian art exhibit in Britain, Dismaland. This write up from the Maddox gallery provides a helpful exploration of Banksy’s work and its influence. Students can discuss what Banksy was trying to accomplish, and how dystopian art and writing are similar and different in their nature and impact.
Dystopian Book Clubs: Travel Poster Activity
PBS’ Great Read poster series features a poster inviting readers to visit London within the world of 1984, with a welcoming quotation from Big Brother highlighted: “It is the best place on earth.” Letting students make a dystopian travel poster of their own is another way to help them explore the idea of influence within dystopia. What does their fictional world offer? And what types of coded warnings might they integrate in their poster?
Dystopian Book Clubs: Examining Propaganda
Finally, you might want to consider an activity in which you explore visual or written propaganda and consider how it wield influence. Considering the line between dystopia and propaganda has always fascinated me (since those days in Bulgaria), and it just might be the same way for your students.
There’s just one piece left to this dystopian book clubs puzzle, and that’s your final assessment. I’d recommend you focus it around this big question of influence. These WWI posters from the Library of Congress are an easy option, or you can go digging for other examples of visual and written propaganda your students could explore. Again ask students to consider, how do these pieces wield influence? Do they find that influence compelling? How is that influence the same and/or different from the influence they’re exploring in dystopian literature?
War Posters from The Library of Congress “Free to Use and Reuse: WWI Posters” Collection
Assessment Options: Argument One-Pagers or Written Arguments
As you wrap up your dystopian book clubs unit, you’ll probably want to follow-up on the big question – how does dystopia wield influence? I’m sure you can think of many possibilities, but I’ll share two here.
First, you could have students write on one of these two questions as an in-class or out-of-class essay:
Is dystopia an effective vehicle for INFLUENCE? How so? Or why not? Explore this question through the lens of your book club choice, but feel free to include evidence and examples you’ve picked up from other books and other artistic pieces as well.
What’s the difference between art that seeks to influence, marketing, and propaganda? Explore works from throughout our unit, including your book club choice.
Or, if you want to present them with an option that combines visuals and text, like many of the activities throughout the unit, you could consider an argument one-pager exploring similar questions.
Ready to Rock It?
Yeah, I know you are. Book clubs are a stellar way to give students choice, dystopia is a compelling medium to discuss, and INFLUENCE is a huge question of our time – so dystopian book clubs are a fascinating option for your curriculum. I hope you’ve found help here in terms of text ideas, context activities, book club meeting structure, activity options, and final assessments.
