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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

Imagine a future where our government monitors every move of its citizens, where independent thought is suspect, when dissent is deadly. Teenage Marena can barely remember when life was any other way. The Zero Tolerance Party has ruled the United States since she was a child. Her mother, an outspoken journalist, was arrested and executed in the early days of the party’s rule. Now, the insidious level of mistrust and fear that permeates the country has become normal . . . almost. Living with her father and younger brother in a government-controlled community, attending a school whose purpose is to teach students to be compliant, unquestioning citizens. Marena and two friends begin a campaign to defy government authority. They call themselves the White Rose Movement in honor of Marena’s mother, who often referred to the White Rose in the articles Marena keeps secreted away. Marena has no way of knowing her mother was referencing another time of resistance and the work of another group of young people—the White Rose Movement against Adolf Hitler, led by Sophie and Hans Scholl in Munich, Germany, during World War II. James DeVita presents a harrowing yet hopeful journey through the darkness of political repression and mind control in a novel that is at once far removed from the present day and eerily recognizable. His provocative, highly discussable story is driven by a riveting plot as the net slowly closes in on Marena and her friends in a novel in which betrayal and heroism are sometimes difficult to distinguish. DeVita’s author’s note provides background on Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Movement. (Age 13 and older)

CCBC Choices 2008 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2008. Used with permission.

From Publisher's Weekly

July 2, 2007
"We believe that the intermingling and tolerance of different religions, foreign cultures, or personal beliefs of the individual dilute the national character and moral foundation of our state." That's society's mantra in DeVita's (Blue) bleak dystopia, inspired by the true story of Sophie Scholl, who, as a member of the White Rose group, engaged in resistance against the Nazi Party. The Millennium War is over, and the Zero Tolerance Party is in charge; officials and school teachers offer soothing promises of a new golden age, none of which ring true amid an ever-tightening net of cultural regulations and phobias. Marena's parents were demonstrators against the war, her mother killed in an attack by government troops; throughout the story, Marena rebuilds her memories of her mother. Party officials take over Marena's school, to get it "back in line with the readaptive guidelines developed by the state." Off to the north, resistance to the Party is brewing; frustrated by her father's apparent acquiescence, Marena decides to begin her own underground movement. To call this book heavy-handed is understatement, and DeVita spends too much time and detail on the machinations of his world. Ages 12-up.