Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

This is book 1 of the Maze Runner series.

Lately there has been a bunch of hoo haw on-line regarding whether the movie The Hunger Games (rated PG 13) is appropriate for elementary students. The book was extremely violent and dark and was all about the government forcing 12-18 year old kids to fight each other to the death.

The Maze Runner is of the same ilk. It is young adult fiction and the youngest kid involved in this particular scenario seems to be about 13 but no one actually remembers exactly how old they are or where they came from. They remember their name and that's it for personal information.

The book begins as Thomas wakes to find himself inside of some sort of metal box and it seems to be moving up. He can't remember anything about himself, save his name, and he's pretty freaked out about the whole thing. After awhile the box stops moving and the ceiling is pried open. A bunch of boys ranging in age are peering down at him. After they hoist him out of the box, their leader, Alby, barks orders at Thomas and the others and Thomas is left in the care of Newt. Thomas has a million questions but no one is answering them. It seems as though telling someone too much, too soon, results in death but this is never really explained.

Thomas learns that he is in a place they call The Glade. It is surrounded by a Maze. Small lizard robots keep an eye on everything and make sure no one is breaking any rules. The rules aren't spelled out, they have been deduced over the past two years as kids who break the rules, die horrible deaths. Thomas makes a friend of Chuck, the newest arrival prior to Thomas. Chuck seems extremely like-able although hapless. The inhabitants of The Glade are all boys age ranging from about

Thomas is frustrated by the fact that eve

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