Common Sense Media Review
By Kate Pavao
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Tough tween girl fights to save family in bleak future.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 10+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Read
What's the Story?
Tough Maggie -- who calls herself Ford Falcon after the car she sleep in -- lives with her family outside protected Bubble Cities. It's not an easy life, to say the least: Her world is overrun with zombie-like GreyDevils and scary hybrid solar bears, and her family scrapes together a life mostly by searching through an old trash pile to salvage goods they can trade. A kindly, and handy, neighbor and his wife make life more bearable, as do simple pleasures, such as digging up a Porky Pig piggy bank she knows will get a good price or drinking tea and reading Emily Dickinson poems with her mom. But when she comes home one day to find her home ransacked and her parents missing, she ends up on a wild adventure to save her family, along the way discovering secrets about the mysterious Bubble Cities and who her dad really is and, ultimately, learning what kind of life she wants to live.
Is It Any Good?
Maggie's a great character who loves reading poetry with her mom, looks after her younger disabled brother, and can fight solar bears and GreyDevils. She also throws zingers at top Bubble City officials when they face off ("You're out of cards, Lard-O," she says to the unctuous, obese politician). Readers who like dystopian stories will find a realistic portrait of the future in THE SCAVENGERS, including weird weather patterns caused by pollution and scientifically modified (and corporate-patented) food with amazing healing powers. They might not be as convinced by the GreyDevils, who are really human drug addicts but behave a lot like stereotypical zombies.
Maggie's life of scavenging and bartering is tough, but readers will be intrigued by all the details about how she survives, including the cool tools she makes, such as a jacklight, "which is the pioneer version of a flashlight." In the end, much -- but not everything -- is resolved, and readers likely will be rooting for a sequel to hear more about the girl who calls herself Ford Falcon.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the depiction of the future in The Scavengers. Does anything in Maggie's world seem possible, or is it all far-fetched?
Do you think it's helpful for kids and teens to read dystopian books that depict rather bleak or corrupt future societies?
Would you rather live under a bubble with a government you don't quite trust or fend for yourself without any government protection?
Book Details
- Author :
- Genre : Coming of Age
- Topics : Family Stories ( Siblings )
- Book type : Fiction
- Publisher : Harper
- Publication date : September 2, 2014
- Publisher's recommended age(s) : 8 - 12
- Number of pages : 336
- Available on : Nook, Hardback, Apple Books, Kindle
- Last updated : October 1, 2025
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