Today in class, the topic of China’s one child policy came up briefly as we discussed current events in the countries we have studied this semester. In that brief discussion, a deep memory that I forgot was even in my brain popped out, and it is related to this one child policy. When I was in fourth grade, we read a book called Among the Hidden, and it was written by Margaret Peterson Haddix. It is a fictional story about a government that is trying to control the population and combat a food and resource shortage by implementing a law that states that families can only have two children, and that any additional children will be killed and the families will be put in jail. The book focuses around the life of a boy named Luke, who is a third child, also called a Shadow Child, and he has to stay in hiding while his older brothers, Matthew and Mark, go to school and his parents are at work. He is not allowed to leave the house and must be quiet so he is not discovered. Eventually, he realizes that he lives next door to another Shadow Child named Jen, and they become friends. Jen wants to organize a rally via an online chat room for all the Shadow Children in the country and invite them to protest in front of the government to allow them to come out of hiding and have the same rights as everyone else. Luke has a bad feeling about this and chooses not to go. Needless to say, the rally does not end well.
I know that Wikipedia is not always the best source, but I have found that it is excellent for plot summaries of books, so here is the page with a more detailed plot summary than what I provided. I thought this was an interesting connection, because while fictional, it has its similarities to the situation in China. Additionally, despite the fact that I read this book nearly 11 or 12 years ago, it was the first book I read that got me into dystopian fiction, so it has always stuck with me.
Another interesting connection I found is the names of the characters in the book. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all brothers, and these three names also correlate to three of the Gospels. Going off of that, the name Jen sounds an awful lot like John, aka the Gospel not mentioned before, so there is definitely a religious connection in this book. I didn’t realize this as a fourth grader, but I noticed it just now when I looked up the book to double check on the character’s names to make sure I had them right. I know for a fact the author did this intentionally, because that is too strange of a coincidence.
Overall, some interesting connections between this book and the class. While it is not necessarily at college reading level, it is a good, quick read and I recommend it. I also found out that it is part of a series, which I did not previously know, so I will definitely be checking out the remaining books to see what they are about!