Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	Among the Betrayed
	Author:	Haddix, Margaret Peterson
	Date Published:	2002
	Genre:	Sci-Fi
	Grade Level:	6 - 8
	Booktalker:	Susan Bartel

Booktalk:
You were supposed to wake up from nightmares. At least that’s what Nina kept telling herself as she lay on the floor of her concrete cell. All her life she had horrible dreams of being captured by the Population Police. That’s what happened when you were a third child. All families are allowed to have only two children under the penalty of death. Third children were often forced into hiding or lived with false identity papers. But Nina was exposed. The police came to her school, to her dining hall and called out her name, and then clasped handcuffs on her. Someone had betrayed her. Now she sat in a prison cell, after being flogged and beaten, chained with handcuffs and ankles cuffs to the wall. The hated man came into her cell and screamed “Why?” into her ear. “Why did you betray your country?” “What kind of a country thinks it is a betrayal just to be born?” she thought. “Was I suppose to kill myself out of loyalty? Out of patriotism? How is it my fault that my parents had two babies before me?” All these thoughts ran through her head, but she did not say them out loud. In fact, she didn’t speak. “I don’t care if you talk or not,” the man said. “Your cohort already told us everything. He cracked like an egg.” Could that be true? Jason, who told her he loved her. He was an illegal child too. They all belonged to a group of shadow children that would meet secretly in the woods. It would have been too risky for him to betray her without betraying himself. A few days later the hating man came back to her cell. He told her that she was arrested for treason, and after carefully questioning him she realized he didn’t know that she was a third child. “Here’s the deal”, he said. “We think you can be useful to us.” Through clenched teeth, Nina asked, “What do you want me to do?” The hating man revealed his true motive. “We have a group of illegals that we’ve arrested.” And what he wanted Nina to do was go in the cell and pretend to be a prisoner among them and trick them into revealing their true identities. But when she agreed and is put in a cell with a ten, nine and six year old she began to question if she could do this, even if it meant facing death.