NOTE: 3 STARS is the rating I give it for my enjoyment of the story (I don't think I was the right reader for it), but as a school librarian, I know that my middle school students will love it. I have already pre-ordered it for my middle school library and will definitely be book-talking it.

THE LIST is a dystopian tale with a surprisingly Christian/Biblical basis, as the story takes place in the city of Ark and the leader is a man named John Noa. I'm curious to see how much of an impact that makes on young readers. It takes place post-Melting which is the effect of drastic climate change on the planet. I fully appreciated the societal messages of the dangers of global warming and limiting language, and liked the concept of the Wordsmiths and the citizens' attempts to use art and music as forms of rebellion.

As an adult reader of much dystopian YA fiction, I fully understand that this is 1) a middle grade novel and 2) meant to be a message book. Fellow reviewers have compared it to CITY OF EMBER, which my students really really enjoy. So, while I was not enthralled with the story, I recognize that the right audience may very well be - I can't wait to get reviews from my middle grade students!

Letta is apprentice to the Wordsmitb in a post-global warming disaster society.
Citizens of Ark, a city that ruler John Noa planned prior to the disaster, may only use words designated by the official List. Letta and her master are in charge of printing and distributing the List. When her master disappears, Letta discovers that Noa is planning something to remove language - and people - all together. Is her world a lie?

This book is so timely, with many parallels to politics today, as well as references to the biblical Noah's Ark. Hand this to readers who like City of Ember and The Giver.

In a future society ruled by a madman determined to wipe out language, a young apprentice is drawn into the resistance movement seeking to defeat the ruler.

When I read the synopsis of The List, I thought it sounded like a unique dystopian post-apocalyptic tale and knew I wanted to read it. It turned out to be The Giver meets 1984 meets Fahrenheit 451. It wasn't unique at all and felt more like a mish mash of every dystopian I've read.

Letta is an apprentice wordsmith in a society with a vocabulary of only 500 words. Her job is to furnish the LIST of words to all the residents of Ark. Using words that are non-list can get you banished from Ark.

In Ark, there is also no art, no music, no words other than the 500 allowed. Per the leader of Ark, Noa, words are what caused man's downfall which lead to the apocalypse of the ice caps melting and the earth being flooded.

The banished are called Desecrators, and have their own settlement on the outskirts of Ark. Although they have to scrabble for food and water, especially water which is scarce, the banished seemed to be happier to me, for they had music, and art, and words. Except for the fact that the townspeople had 3 bare bones meals a day and barely enough water to exist, they seemed kind of miserable. And the Desecrators never had issues with sneaking into town to meet with Letta in her house day after day, or getting what they needed to survive.

In all honesty, I had a tough time understanding when the characters spoke "list". And overall, I really didn't understand the concept of removing language from the world.

The rest of the story was completely predictable. But then, it is middle grade, so maybe it needs to be. I keep going back and forth with this one. I never quite warmed to it, or to the protagonist although I really wanted to. I liked Letta's master, Benjamin, much better and wish he'd stuck around for longer.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

Letta is a wordsmith on the Ark, the last safe place on the earth. She is the keeper of the words, she makes the official list that people are allowed to use because it was the over use of words that caused the last catastrophe that pretty much wiped out the earth and everything on it. There is no more music because that was a frivolous use of words. But there are people that live on the outskirts of the Ark that believe differently and they are trying to start a revolution. Letta is forced with a horrid decision as her leader keeps cutting more and more words, to stay and accept the way things are or rebel and fight for the words she holds dear.

This is a awesome book and one that makes you think on so many different levels. I am sure a middle grade reader might find certain things in their life's to fight for that would be different that a young adult or adult, but it makes each think of those things and how they might go about it in their everyday life same as Letta did. This is a powerful book and I hope it will make one of this generations classics.

How I wish this book has been around when I was a young reader.
Beautiful and powerful concept that draws you into the power, magic and utmost necessity of words.
Brilliant!

The List helps fill a gap in dystopian novels appropriate for the lower end of the middle grades grouping. The book is well written, the characters are interesting, and the plot will intrigue young readers who have never read The Giver, 1984, or other well established dystopian novels.

The setting is focused on Ark; a community established to make sure that mankind survives after The Melting. Global warming is the cause of planet Earth's population annihilation. Inside of Ark, every person has a job to perform and apprentices are taken on by those in charge to make sure there is always someone able to take over the task at hand.

The story revolves around Letta, the wordsmith’s apprentice. She must help her master, Benjamin, to write, record, keep, and deliver the words of List, the language of Ark. List is being limited to 500 words, but the wordsmith is also charged with recording and delivering job specific words for apprentices to learn. Benjamin is much more than just Letta’s master and teacher. He is the closest thing to a parent that she has and they have a unique bond.

The world of Ark is incredibly interesting but due to List it is very difficult to get to know people very well or have deep conversations, which is the sole purpose of List – to limit conversation and idle chatter. Very few people read and there are no books. The leader of Ark, Noa, uses List and the dreaded enforcers, gavvers, to control the citizens of Ark. As the story progresses, we find out that Noa has banned art and music in all forms and he controls the water supply. In essence, he controls humanity and life.

Letta’s life starts to break away from normal after Benjamin leaves for over a week to go word hunting outside of Ark and a strange boy, Marlo, shows up at her shop with a bullet wound. When the gavvers come looking for the boy, Letta decides to hide him feeling that it is the right thing to do. This is a humanitarian act and a treacherous act in Ark. She finds herself questioning why she would betray Ark and Noa for this strange boy. The plot quickly builds from there with Ark and the world around it becoming fuller, more intriguing, and more dangerous for Letta. This is her awakening.

I appreciate that the author kept the content at a level that allows for eight and nine year-olds to read it and engage in it. There is a wealth of topics and questions to explore from this story: everything from Global Warming, global drinking water supplies, saline water treatment for drinking water, the purpose of language and art, types of government, does the name Noa refer to Noah and/or NOAA, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, does the name Letta refer to letter or Lethe, etc. I was hoping the official List words would be at the end of the novel. A potential class or library project is to come up with a list of essential words you would personally need/want if you could only use 500 words ever again.

**I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

There is no doubt that this debut novel by Patricia Forde is based on a very fascinating concept. The List is set in a dystopian world where most of the world is destroyed by the Melting, most people now forced to live in the city of Ark and their surroundings because there is nowhere else left. The founder of Ark is Noa (see the biblical references yet?) and he has restricted the use of language to just 500 approved words... His belief of humanity being able to use/abuse words and words bringing doom to the human kind is fascinating and I would definitely have given The List a full 5 stars for originality. The so-called List speak is fascinating (although that might just be the philologist in me talking) and the List itself plays a central role in the story. The worldbuilding is intriguing and even though the plot itself isn't all that exciting I'm sure it will be fitting enough for the age group. The List is ment as a Middle Grade read and I admit I don't have a lot of experience reading stories for this age. Still, I do believe the tone doesn't always felt right (too adult) and I personally had difficulties connecting to the writing style. As fascinating as the concept of this story sounded, I don't think I enjoyed actually reading about it as much as I would have hoped... I also struggled to connect to the characters and personally didn't like Letta at all. She seemed quite bland as a main character and I'm not sure if she will be able to win over the target group either; this has most likely to do with the lack of character development in general. The ending itself wasn't really satisfying either and it took me a lot longer than expected to finish this story. In short, while I loved certain elements of The List (the concept, the List-speak), I also struggled with other elements and all in all unfortunately I ended up having mixed thoughts.

Shades of 1984 in this clever new dystopian novel. The central idea is not one I'd seen before, and for once there was no awful love triangle! The heroine was clever and brave and I was on the edge of my seat coming up to the end. I hope there's a sequel in the works! I'll be looking forward to this one coming into stock. Thanks Sourcebooks for allowing me to read it.

Sorry, I was trying my best to finish reading this book but I just can't. And I have high hopes of this too.

Well-written and intriguing for the most part! A great middle grade novel.

'The here and now is only the smallest part of who we are. Each of us is all that we have been, all our stories, all that we could be'.

Letta is an apprentice wordsmith in the city of Ark, a dystopian world where all technology and animals have been destroyed in a great flood. Her job is to distribute 'The List' a set of 500 words that the citizens of Ark are allowed to use. All other words are censored. So what would life be like to live in a world without words? Without the ability to express hopes or dreams?

I loved the concept of this book, but I must admit I thought it would extremely difficult for the author to convey a world in which most of the characters were extremely limited in their vocabulary. However, I felt this was handled wonderfully. The main characters were all free to speak 'old' (i.e. 'Proper' English), and the story was not hindered by the others inability to speak in this way. I felt the story perhaps took inspiration from our modern world - how often do people speak in abbreviated terms these days? At one point early on in the story, Marco even uses the term 'LOL', although Letta doesn't understand its meaning.

I loved the idea that words truly are our pathway to freedom and power. However, this wasn't a perfect novel for me.

The pace was quite slow at times, only really picking up pace from about 50% onwards when Letta finally realised what has happened to Benjamin, and what Noa (the main antagonist) was up to. The first half seems to concentrate more on Letta's day to day issues and her inner turmoils over the resistance. Also, as a dystopian novel, it follows the predictable pattern of other similar dystopian worlds (i.e. Dictator trying to pass the world off as a Utopia, an uprising of rebels and the conflicted hero) but it had enough of a unique concept to carry me through.

A lovely little dystopian novel.

I enjoyed this story about a post-apocalyptic society where words are considered dangerous, and people are forced to use only The List, a small selection of words approved by the ruler of their small surviving community. Only the Wordsmith is allowed to know and use words outside of the List.
The main character, Letta, is apprenticed to the Wordsmith, and her love for the beauty of language is a major theme throughout the book. Letta uncovers a plot to rid the entire community of ALL their words, and she is caught in the midst of a desperate rebellion, full of intrigue and adventure. But is Letta willing to risk everything, just to save a few words?

I really loved Letta, because she's a wonderfully complex character, with contradicting traits that make her interesting. She struggles to overcome her fear, but feels like a failure, until she is inspired to protect those she loves and launches out to face the very thing that frightens her most. I loved following her internal struggle, and watching her question her beliefs and find a way to remake her view of the world.

Another great theme that unfolds through the story is the way that Letta connects to the people around her. She's recklessly generous in a harsh world, and her compassion for others gets her into trouble. There are such extremes of human nature portrayed through many of the side characters: people who will be cruel just because they can, and people who will be kind just because they can, expecting nothing in return.
Letta meets such different people on both sides, and it begins to shape her ideas about the world her community is creating, after the natural disaster that plunged most of the planet into the sea. If all the future of humanity depends on one little group of people, what kind of humanity do you want to see flourish? Letta has to answer what kind of person she wants to be, and who she will choose to be her true friends.

Most of the side characters are rather one-dimensional, and just sort of background filler; but the most important side characters are full of life and diversity. I wouldn't say they are "complex", but they didn't bore me either.
The best part was seeing Letta react to them. Letta's old schoolteacher who still feels concerned for the well-being of her old pupils, the mysterious renegade boy who stumbles into Letta's life with a bang, the wild-eyed mother who has lost her child, the rebel musician who plays sad music to express her grief; these characters brought Letta's community to life, and each of them highlighted another aspect of Letta's personality.

I did NOT like that there are passages set aside in italics at the end of some chapters with the internal thoughts of the villain, showing his motivations and a little backstory. I didn't think the story needed it. I was fine seeing things from just Letta's perspective. Multiple POVs is one of my pet peeves though, so it might not bother anyone else.

The world-building, other than the List itself, is just your basic town of post-apocalyptic survivors sometimes squabbling over water, food, and shelter. I did like the parts about the Wordsmith collecting words and recording them. Anything to do with Words or the List was interesting and new, and I liked that the world-building is detailed, if not exactly original.

I enjoyed the plot, but it was fairly predictable. There was only one thing at the end that actually surprised me. There are also some parts of the plot that felt forced or out of place. A couple of awkward scenes didn't flow very well with the story and felt as though they had been copy-and-pasted into the book to add drama or more romantic interest.

But mostly the action flowed very well from scene to scene, and just when you thought the heroes would start to make some progress toward their goals, they would encounter some huge setback or danger that threw everything into turmoil again.

There is some violence, torture, disease, and blood, and some of that also felt forced, like it was pushed into the story as a scare tactic, to shock the reader. But it also served a purpose in startling the characters into action, so it still works in the story.

The ending was much too quick, with several things left unexplained and characters left out. It needed a lot more denouement, and I was disappointed because it needed some better resolution. If that ending had just pulled everything in for a tight conclusion, I could have ignored some of the other plot problems.

I was very impressed with the writing style. The dialogue is fresh, and the author draws you into Letta's world by using a lot of body language and colors and smells. (Although sometimes the smells were a little overdone. I don't need to be told six times that Marlo smells like sage.)

What really made the writing excellent is the obvious love for vivid words. Sometimes the writing forces you to stop and consider one word. Just one. What does it really mean? What do I mean when I use that word? How does using this word change my life? How does it reflect the world around me? Would I give my life for the right to use that word?
Deep thinking going on.

At other times, the author would sneak an important word into a paragraph a couple of pages away from the first use of that word, and make you think about how your perception of that word has changed in the last two pages, because of what Letta is thinking and doing and experiencing. Suddenly the word "Hope" or "Warmth" has another meaning than it did two pages ago. Sneaky writing! I love sneaking writing that makes you think!!!

All in all, a good book with a decent plot, an excellent main character, and excellent writing. If the plot had just been a little more tightly woven, and the side characters a little more spirited, it would have easily been a four-star book for me.

Disclaimer: I received an ecopy of this book from the author/publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts and are not influenced by anyone.

The List takes place in what is left after the world ends through global warming. The ice caps melted and flooded the world (known as the Melting). Very little is left, but one man, John Noa, saw the end coming and built a community to survive the end (Ark). In Ark, words are limited, in fact there are only 500 allowable words people can speak without getting in trouble. Unnecessary words and language have been eliminated. Letta is the apprentice to the Wordsmith Benjamin who keeps The List of approved words. She has to carefully copy out The List and distribute it to teachers and masters so that the young know what words they can speak. Different jobs get different lists of specialized words and the wordsmith has to keep those as well. Benjamin also goes out into the wild to find any words left from the world before.

When Benjamin disappears, Letta becomes the wordsmith. Around the same time she helps Marlo, a desecrator (someone who promotes freedom and the arts), who is being hunted by the gavvers (police force). She becomes a lot more knowledgeable about the world outside of Ark and Noa’s teachings. She also learns of a sinister plot by Noa to rob humanity of its words altogether. Now Letta must decide who’s side she is on and what she wants the future to look like.

Part of me really loved the idea of this book and part of me wished for more in its execution. I liked the idea of the world ending in flood and a group of survivors making the best of what is left. I wish there was a bit more world-building. Forde does a great job describing the end of the world and what led up to it. She doesn’t do so great a job of showing how Noa became so powerful and how he got people to follow him or how he built the society of Ark. Noa seemed more like a crazy recluse than a prophet so I had no idea why so many followed him. Then there is the fact that this story takes place a relatively short time after the flooding of the world (years not decades have passed). So why did people give in to the loss of language and freedom so easily? I thought Forde did a good job describing why Noa wants to get rid of language and his motivation even if it didn’t really make sense; however, the motivation of others to go along with it is not as clear. I also thought the ending was really rushed and didn’t make the most sense. However, I loved Letta as a character and appreciated her struggle to think on her own and make her own decisions. I just wish the story would have been a bit better and a bit less predictable.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy.

Copy provided by NetGalley for an ARC

What is life without words?

A pretty good introduction to dystopian fiction. Some criticism regarding the book not being clever enough but this is aimed at middle grade/YA and if not challenging enough there are a host of novels that of this type that will.

The plot is that a young girl, an apprentice Wordsmith, is a keeper of a List of 500 words that can be used by the populace. Letta, the Wordsmith soon realises that this is a tool used to control and deny. As words become fewer and fewer, Letta becomes embroiled in an attempt to uncover the secrets of the plot to eradicate language, culture and the arts forever.

It feels like a lot of Dystopian fiction, the book is nice and gentle considering the subject matter but lacks some conviction. The characters aren’t particularly well developed and the plot a little predictable. The book loses a little in the middle but gains pace in the last third and gains some momentum.

The concept is good, especially aimed at the YA market, the idea of controlling by limiting language is good. It just feels like an first book in a trilogy and written for that purpose .

I received an advanced copy of this e-book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions remain my own.

The polar ice caps have melted.
The world was flooded.
Noa decides to build his own Ark. Not the boat kind, but a city of sorts. In Ark, people are limited to only 500 words they can used, called the list.

Letta is the main character in this book. She is the wordsmith's (basically word keeper) apprentice.

I loved following her journey through this story. From the naive girl to the one beginning to see the error of Ark's ways. Seeing how she learns things and grows. The way that she is torn between what she's grown up knowing and what she is being presented with. It all felt very real. It is definitely aimed for a bit of a younger reader. The language is simple, but not overly so. It was a captivating story that kept pulling me back into the world of Ark. To me, it was a different spin on the end of the world stories.

A post-cataclysmic society called Ark is led by a fanatic who believes words are at the heart of the problem. After all, words can stretch the truth, can bend, can lie, just like the politicians did before The Great Melting. Letta is apprenticed to Ark's wordsmith, Benjamin; the community is allowed only 500 words, which Benjamin and Letta curate. Benjamin saves words for a time when man will be able to handle more - or so Letta believes. When Benjamin disappears on a word-finding mission, and Letta meets a boy from a neighboring community of free-thinkers and artists, she discovers that their leader, the leader she put her trust in, is working on a way to rob the people of Ark of language forever.

The List is similar on many levels to The Giver: an enclosed, guarded society, quiet removals of dissidents, and hidden truths waiting to be revealed. As an apprentice wordsmith, Letta sees more than the average Ark citizen; saving the life of a Desecrator - a member of a neighboring group of artists and musicians - opens her eyes to even more goings-on within Ark and its surroundings. It's up to her to act on the information she receives, and she struggles with the burden of responsibility. There are strong themes for discussion here: the power of words, free thought and speech, and art as resistance. This is a great book to give readers who are ready for something beyond The Giver, but not yet ready for Fahrenheit 451. This novel can easily stand on its own, but readers may want to see what lies in Ark's future.

The List was an enjoyable book. It does bring up an interesting idea in what if those in charge decide to limit what words can be used (language is powerful). This book definitely set up a sequel and I would like to see what happens next. There were a few big revelations and I want to see how they play out.

Letta is one of the chosen who live in the Arka post-apocalyptic world in which the list of acceptable and allowable words is ever shortened. She is apprenticed to Benjamin the Wordsmith, keeper of words and supplier of the List - a set number of approved words that can be used in speech by anyone living in the Ark. When Benjamin is reported dead, Letta begins questioning everything and everyone she has known. No longer certain of whom to trust, she sets out on a journey of discovery and determination, that will either set her free or end her life.

Not usually one for dystopian novels, I found much to relate to in this book. It had some elements and echoes of other novels I have enjoyed (1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc.) and as someone who spends as much time as possible reading, the concept of an increasingly limited vocabulary to describe human life and experience was both fascinating and terrifying.

I highly recommend giving this book a try.

Letta is the Wordsmith in her closed community. Under the orders of their leader, John Noa, she must maintain a list of approved words that now form the common language. In this dystopian world after The Melting, (global warming causing natural disasters), Noa rules by restriction. When Letta meets outsiders who value art and music and the use of creative language she begins to see her life differently. Soon she learns that Noa plans to permanently remove words from all but a select few. As her view of the world shifts Letta learns to find a strength she did not know she had.