Why are humans greedy and always wanting more, even to the point of harming others so we can get what we want? On the flip side, what allows us to love, to create, and to bring beauty into this world. The characters in Patricia Forde's novel, The List, wrestle with these questions. Thrown into leadership of a world after cataclysmic disaster, John Noa maintains tight control of the people who live in the ARK. To try to maintain an orderly and peaceful society, he implements a myriad of rules, including a restriction on words, for language can be used to mislead and to harm. Letta, born into this world and apprenticed to the wordsmith, Benjamin, is catapulted into a leadership role when her master is declared dead. In her own journey, she meets others along her way that lead her to question the system in which she is living as she discovers the power of language. Letta leads us, as readers, to think about the power of words like hope, dream, and most importantly, love, along with what it means to be human.

As an educator, I would agree that language is a powerful thing, and Forde has brought us a novel that sheds light on what a world might look like if the power of language was held in check. Reminiscent of the world of The Giver, The List is a engaging novel that raises some interesting questions. I know I like it - I think you will too!

I enjoyed the concept of mixing both an apocalyptic scenario with a dystopian fiction, such as a cross between the Hunger Games and High Rise, however, I thought it fell short in many ways. The context was not particularly developed as we had little understanding of what really happened before and after the Melting. The idea of language as a weapon pre-apocalypse was also not very clear. There was a wild amount of movement and action that was also not fully formed, so it made it difficult to envisage the characters travelling from A to B. Overall, a great, relevant and contemporary topic with a few descriptive flaws.

What if we only had 500 words that we could use? The List starts with the wordsmith asking for 700, but getting denied. In this land, everyone must speak "List", an approved list of words acceptable for use. If you are caught using vocabulary not on the list, you are labeled a "Desecrator," and thrown out of the community.

Ark is the community that John Noa founded after The Melting. He believed that the world was ruined because men chose to use words instead of use actions. People argued about climate change rather than do something about it. He is determined that this new community will not make the same mistake.

Letta is the wordsmith's apprentice. The wordsmith makes and keeps the list. Their job is to also make lists of words for specific trades. When the wordsmith goes missing, Letta is suddenly thrown into the role of wordsmith. It will be her duty to keep the list.

Letta starts to realize that the Desecrators might not be bad people. For the first time she is exposed to art and music, and it changes her perspective. She has always believed in John Noa, that he is trying to save his people. But now she is not sure. Should people live in a world limited in words, art and music? What is John Noa's plan for Ark? Now that Letta is the wordsmith will she complicit in his plan?

This List is a beautiful story full of words, art, emotions and history. It is easy to see John Noa's plan and why it is so wrong. But it is just as easy to see why he believes in it. This would make a great book to read in a book group, I imagine students taking both sides of the issues that it raises. I will certainly buy this for my library, and would recommend it for grades 5-12!

Thank you very much for allowing me to read this title; I am trying to read as widely as possible ahead of the Carnegie/Greenaway nominations and awards for 2018 and your help is much appreciated.
As a Carnegie/Greenaway judge, I'm not allowed to comment about my opinions on specific titles so I can't offer an individual review on any title as I stated on my profile.

This is a very timely book given all that is happening in the United States with our new and very controversial President. What happens when we are no longer able to speak our minds? This book takes freedom of the press and extends it to what people are allowed to say and even think, in a world gone terribly wrong. Yes, words can be filled with lies, but they can also bring peace, heal relationships, and give us hope. Certainly a book that will leave you thinking!

Told with a rather emotionally thirsty, distant narrative, The List somehow still remains engaging with a very intriguing premise. Forde seems to have attacked a dystopian novel that is very reminiscent, as the summary suggests, of Lois Lowry's series The Giver Quartet, and even more specifically the last book, Son. The book's blurb also makes mention of a favorite of mine, which I actually did read in middle school, Fahrenheit 451, but other than the relationship to censorship that is shared, I didn't get that vibe at all. In fact, the attempt this community and its leaders or founders make at an utopian society was more along the lines of M. Night Shyamalan's 2004 movie, The Village. And, of course, with utopian societies being rather impossible, especially in literature (because otherwise where is the conflict driving the story?), both the weirdness and the otherness are present right from the beginning, drawing you in.

With a direct and, at times, choppy style, Forde aimed a mature understanding of what makes humans human at the middle grade level. Descriptive language mixed with the withdrawn and removed narration, made for a few moments when the style was a little off. At times, the simplicity proved to be too plain, too basic and the story could've stood to be a little deeper and more complex, but overall, my interest and desire to continue held strong throughout. I am certainly going to consider recommending this to my own children, especially during these turbulent times.

**I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

I got this book for my preteen daughter to read and it didnt seem to hold her interest. I made her finish it and she said that the background, the scenes were hard to imagine. Plus she said it was kind of cheesy.

This book was marketed as a middle grade book, but with the language and content, I would definitely place it more in the YA category.

That being said, the book was good and I liked it.

This is the story of Letta and her job as the wordsmith's apprentice in a society that is only supposed to speak words that are on the list. It briefly touches on how the society came to be this way and focuses mainly on Letta's journey to attempt to expand the list and keep people from losing all of their words as the leader of the society continually asks for the list to be shortened.

This story was one that touched on family and friendships and how to strengthen both. It briefly touched on rebellion and why it is important and how one should handle disagreement.

Overall, I wanted more from this story. I wanted a tighter focus on one thing or more development of Letta.

Mostly a good book, but beware of content and language difficulty for younger children especially.

I had just finished reading a couple of “those” facebook posts from climate change deniers. I’d also just been watching as the newly elected administration in the U.S. began to delete pages from the whitehouse.gov website on climate change. And then there comes this book into my life. A book that shows a major climate catastrophe and a now post-apocalyptic world. The blame for this catastrophe was placed on words and the way that economists and climate change deniers used those words to trick the world into believing that there really was no threat and the human race could continue on with business as usual. The only survivors in this land are a meager few who could identify where this ignorance would lead and set about building a new kind of ARK, one that would save humanity from the certain destruction to come. But they had to do something to ensure that this sort of coercion did not happen again, that the human race was protected from itself. Hence, THE LIST. The list is a list of acceptable words which make up the entirety of acceptable speech and written language in the ARK. Letta is the Wordsmith’s apprentice. Together they manage the list words and ensure that they are transcribed and delivered to each class at the beginning of school each year. The list is there to protect them, but there are some that disagree that words are their enemy.

This book has a mood and cadence much like The Giver by Lois Lowry, which has always been a favourite of mine. Letta as a narrator has a fantastic voice and her bravery despite the possible dire consequences of some of her actions and decisions is easy to champion. The world built, the ARK, is well described and feels to be an organic part of the overall narrative. The characters are compelling and it is easy to get a sense of the community and how it runs day-to-day.

Overall, I feel like The List is one of those books that is both easy to enjoy as a good story and has a deeper meaning that can be pondered and explored.

I received a copy of this YA book from NetGalley in return for an honest review, and I'm so glad. This debut novel was quite well done. I know that dystopian novels have been all the rage, but this one took quite a unique spin, think about it, could you really communicate if you were limited to 500 words? Let's is the apprentice wordsmith, and their word List is now being cut to 500 words. Not only that, as the books progresses, her world is turned upside down. Who can she trust? Who is on her side? What should she do? Definitely worth a read.

I thought this book had a completely terrifying premise-after an apocalyptic event, the new leader decides the real problem with the world is words and is determined to get rid of all of them. Thankfully, a smart, strong girl starts to trust people she doesn't know and suddenly, there's a revolution. I thought the writing in this one was great. This will make a great addition to any library.

I was very intrigued by this premise and immediately got sucked into this story. It's a sort of dystopian/post-apocalyptic MG, which I haven't read too much of before. I'd say it's distinctly upper-MG. There's some very clear and troubling violence that's not on the campy level of, say, Rick Riordan's violence. The whole 'importance of language' piece of it is a little heavy-handed and on the nose, but that's my only quibble. Otherwise, it was a great read with a wonderful, pro-active main character.

Loved this story and I have already mentioned it to a few of my fourth grade students. I think some of my higher readers would love this book. I couldn't put the book down once I started reading it! Wow, can't wait to see this in bookstores so I can get a copy in my classroom. Thank you for letting me read it ahead of publishing.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My students love dystopian novels so I was excited to check this one out. Censorship and word study? Great topics to explore. However, I found the story hard to engage with and the characterization was a bit off. This wasn't the right dystopian for me, but I'm sure I will have students that will connect with it.

The List by Patricia Forde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

This is a middle-grade book about the dangers of limiting your vocabulary! So get your dictionary and... oh, wait, it's not about that at all!

It's *actually* about a SF dystopian world after all the ice melted and the dangers of wrong thinking made the scared Noa build an ark, stuff all his people aboard, and be very, very careful about striking certain words out of the common lexicon of regular words.

Our young protagonist, Letta, is a journeywoman who's job is to collect the proscribed words, and later, she becomes the master.

I thought it was good based on these basic ideas and the premise, but if you think you've seen this before in 1984 or the Giver, then you're right. In fact, you've probably seen it in numberless short stories and even quite a few tv shows.

Is it worth reading? Does the plot boldly go where none other of its kind goes? Sadly, no, if you're a reader of YA. It's pretty potboiler with standard situations, but the ending does go bold.

Is it solidly written and keep my interest? It's solidly written, but I did have a few issues keeping my interest going, but that may be because it's middle-grade literature.

I do think it's better than The Giver, however, so that might be something to consider when looking for small-town ethics and a rigidly stratified society that meets unrestricted ideas for the first time.

In a post-apocalyptical world, a new society has formed around the idea that words create conflict, confusion and ultimately destruction. As such, speech is limited to a list of words. Letta, the wordsmith’s apprentice, is tasked with collecting words, and handing out lists of acceptable words. When she encounters a rebel, she begins to question the list and elimination o words.

Although the plot was a bit predictable, I thought this was an interesting world. It has a unique perspective that made me think about the power of words and potential doomsday reactions. I think teenagers will particularly like this book, as it contains elements of mystery and romance.

During my years as an English major back in college, I had myself convinced that I didn’t like dystopian novels. I hated Brazil, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 1984, Fahrenheit 451…basically all of the classic dystopians that I was being assigned. It wasn’t until I forced myself to read The Hunger Games a few years ago that I realized I didn’t necessarily hate the entire genre, just the books that had been forced on me at school.

So I started trying other young adult dystopians. It turns out that these books, while still in-depth and thoughtful, often turn out to be much more action packed and tend to keep me on the edge of my seat. Such is the case with The List.

In The List, we are presented with a city called “Ark”, which is the only (known) livable area left on the planet after “The Melting”. (Basically climate change. That’s not really a spoiler, since it’s pretty self evident in the name, and they end up explaining pieces of it early enough in the book that it becomes fairly obvious.) In Ark, there is a set List of words that the people are allowed to use, which is maintained by The Wordsmith. This is because the Leader of Ark believes that words are the main reason that people were able to destroy the planet.

This is a fascinating concept, that the world could be destroyed by language. Politicians who use language to dissuade the public’s fears and tell them that they don’t need to worry about global warming–even as the water starts taking over cities, Murderers who use language to lure in new victims, Conspiracy Theorists who spend so much time trying to convince us about things that aren’t real that we end up distracted from the things that are. What would the world be like if we didn’t have the language that let them accomplish these things?

The author uses Letta, our protagonist, to really delve into this idea. Letta grew up in Ark, completely believing in the idea that the Leader was trying to protect them, even as she strove to preserve the words that were being lost. Then she meets up with Marlo, an outsider from a group of people called “Destroyers”: artists, musicians, poets…those who want to see the beauty mankind can create brought back. Inevitably, Letta’s ideas of what is right begin to shift. Could it be that language itself isn’t the problem, but how you wield it?

There is also a ton of action. There is the usual plot where the protagonist has to save the world, with the help of her new found friends. I say “usual” because it’s a common theme in Young Adult dystopians, but the author here does a very good job making the plot believable and in keeping with the world she’s created. I won’t spoil the book by going into too much detail about it, but it’s a good mesh of detailed, actually dangerous, and quick-paced enough to keep the readers engaged.

Overall, I thought this was a very good book. I was immersed in it enough to finish it in two sittings. It would be a good introduction into the dystopian genre for younger readers. It is also a really interesting concept and presents an interesting thought experiment on how language can change the world.

"The List" has everything I want from a book: a compelling heroine, mystery, adventure, hope and villainy.

The concept (restricted language) is both terrifying and tempting. If you read it on a day that you've enjoyed beauty - a walk, time with a loved one, art - the notion of just 500 words seems criminal and insane. That said, if you read it on a day that you've also watched corrupt media and politicians (naming no names), it's easy to see the allure of limiting language so that people can no longer lie and manipulate so readily. This is why the story is so rounded: as a reader, you keep changing your mind.

I want to read it for a second time and I need my friends to read it, too, so we can debate the concept!

As a teacher, I can see a great deal of potential for this book in my classroom. It's currently my number 1 book of 2017 and it'll take a lot to top it.

I would recommend this book for pre-teens. As an adult who appreciates teen driven dystopian novels, this was a slight disappointment. My attention wandered and I found myself flipping through pages when I felt the chapter was dragging a bit too much. There could a sequel based on how the book ended but I think I will pass if that comes to be.

This middle grade dystopian society was really captivating. Letta is the word keeper’s apprentice in a world where citizens are only allowed to use the 500 words on the approved “List.” If they’re caught saying anything else, they risk being banished past the large gates of the community.

There are assigned jobs, birthing limits, and a mysterious dictator who orchestrates it all. Throughout the book, there are revelations and twists that explain more about how the characters got to the city and the plans the dictator has for the future.

I found this really interesting because it did have vibes similar to The Giver and The Knife of Never Letting Go. There were some twists that even I didn’t foresee, and I think 5th-6th grade readers would love it. A lot of the plot is centered around the ideas of global warming and chemical contamination and religion. I think those were all presented in ways that were understandable and never too “preachy”. It was an interesting read all around.