{"id":12926,"date":"2015-04-19T21:16:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-19T21:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-unidentified-dystopian-ya-about-education\/"},"modified":"2015-04-19T21:16:04","modified_gmt":"2015-04-19T21:16:04","slug":"the-unidentified-dystopian-ya-about-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-unidentified-dystopian-ya-about-education\/","title":{"rendered":"THE UNIDENTIFIED: dystopian YA about education tranformed into a giant, heavily sponsored\u00a0game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com\/post\/116848718454\/the-unidentified-dystopian-ya-about-education\">mostlysignssomeportents<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/4c1e51b4c9a7a2d8a92d5844cfe2754d\/tumblr_inline_nn2crlFjSJ1rkw4x1_540.jpg\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Rae Mariz\u2019s debut YA <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0061802085\/downandoutint-20\">The Unidentified<\/a> is a thrilling, engaging polemic about the corporatization of kids\u2019 lives in the guise of a mystery story.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIn the future, the US education system has gone bankrupt, and has been<br \/>\nrescued by the private sector, who convert giant malls into heavily<br \/>\nsurveilled school buildings in which all education takes place as a<br \/>\nseries of sponsored games that, on the one hand, deliver tailored,<br \/>\ncreative curriculum, but, on the other, commodify all  learning, social<br \/>\nintercourse and creativity, turning it all into trends and products that<br \/>\n are sold back to the students and the wider world.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOur plucky heroine is a girl named Kid. Kid likes mixing her own music,<br \/>\nis a moderately successful student, but isn\u2019t anywhere near the top of<br \/>\nthe social ladder. Far from it; she\u2019s hardly got any friends at all on<br \/>\nher profile, and is skeptical of the whole enterprise.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThis makes her an ideal candidate for the school\u2019s corporate sponsors,<br \/>\nwho are anxious to reach the disaffected outsiders who are the last<br \/>\nremaining target market. So when Kid discovers a gruesome,<br \/>\nanti-corporatist prank and begins to investigate it, it\u2019s only natural<br \/>\nthat the sponsors would swoop in to underwrite her mystery and use it to<br \/>\n sell a whole new package of anti-sponsor sponsored goods.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSubversive, cleverly written, challenging, and surprising, <i>The Unidentified<\/i> is a great book for young adults and the grownups who care about them, in the tradition of Scott Westerfeld\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2006\/01\/01\/uglies_young_adult_s.html\">Uglies<\/a>. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0061802085\/downandoutint-20\">The Unidentified<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>mostlysignssomeportents: Rae Mariz\u2019s debut YA The Unidentified is a thrilling, engaging polemic about the corporatization of kids\u2019 lives in the guise of a mystery story. In the future, the US education system has gone bankrupt, and has been rescued by the private sector, who convert giant malls into heavily surveilled school buildings in which all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3mu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}