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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

Katey attends school in the Game, a converted mall designed by corporations, which have become the major funders of education. The companies constantly monitor students on camera and online in hopes of finding teens they can “brand” to help promote and sell their products. Everything in the Game is about being connected, being cool, and staying on top of the latest trend. Unlike most of her peers, Katey isn’t eager to be branded and does the bare minimum to remain a player; as a result, she’s intrigued by a group called the Unidentified who seem to be inviting the students to break out of the controlled and controlling system based on popularity and consumerism. But her very interest in the Unidentified—she’s the first to pay attention to what they are doing, and curious about who they are—attracts sponsor attention. Katey and her mom are struggling financially, and she accepts the sponsorship only because it comes with economic benefits. Suddenly the Unidentified are being exploited by sponsors as the next big fad, even as Katey discovers they may not be as radical as they originally appeared. This timely novel combines a mystery (who is behind the Unidentified?) with exploration of provocative issues of privacy and consumerism in a story set in a believably not-too-distant future. (Age 13 and older)

CCBC Choices 2011 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2011. Used with permission.

From Publisher's Weekly

September 20, 2010
Sometime in the future, big business controls education. Shopping malls have been converted to high-surveillance schools, and students are "players," participating in a combination of learning and entertainment in a multimedia experience called the Game, while sponsors look for new trends and exploitative opportunities. Katey, aka Kid, chafes at the whole process, but plays along to pursue her dream of making music. When a group calling itself the Unidentified pulls off a daring prank challenging people to think for themselves, Kid's curiosity leads her further down the path of disobedience and resistance. In an ironic twist, Kid's attempt
at self-expression brings her to the attention of sponsors, who offer her everything she's wanted. But is it success, or
is it selling out? The more she learns about the Unidentified, the less certain she is of her goals and the more determined she is to shake things up. An all-too-logical extrapolation of today's trends, this story of conformity, rebellion, and seeking one's identity is evocative of Scott Westerfeld and Cory Doctorow, injecting a dystopian setting with an optimistic, antiestablishment undercurrent. Ages 12—up.