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Title: 'Anthem' for kids
Review: I'll give this book two stars for the fact that the writing wasn't really heinous and its just a warning about conformity. The book really isn't terrible, just cliched. The old horse of 'they had perfect lives, but they did not love' is trotted out once again, and the entire 'supposedly utopian but secretly evil' society that the author crafts is self-indulgent and unconvincing. In short, this is "Look everyone! I'm writing serious material!" work, a dumbed-down 'Anthem'. Yes, it's nicely allegorical, but there are other books that carry off the utopian theme much better, such as '1984', 'Brave New World' or the aforementioned 'Anthem'. It's truly painful to see teenagers learning this in school and taking it as the epitome of Utopian allegory.
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