Description:
Marissa Meyer’s book Cinder is a dystopian novel set in futuristic Earth’s New Beijing. Here you’ll see streets, junkyards, markets, cramped apartments, and palaces all crowded with a mixture of human, androids, and the hated cyborgs. As the new plague (Letumosis) ravages the planet’s human population, New Beijing puts a lottery into place utilizing cyborg medical testing upon willing/unwilling participants. A research scientist’s family adopts Cinder (a cyborg); however, the father (who was the researcher) died, leaving the family destitute save for Cinders mechanical skills. Utilizing those skills, Cinder’s forced into supporting her useless family in a quazzie-parallel version of the classic Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale, Cinderella; complete with an unexpected meeting of Prince Kaito (Kai) and the evil Lunar Queen. Once Peony’s (her stepsister) diagnosed with Letumosis, Cinder’s stepmother unwillingly volunteers her for the Plague’s research, mostly out of spite and for the money (families are paid for the cyborg’s service, which is fatal). Once given to research, Cinder’s life travels through a series of events, which reveal hidden secrets (including Letumosis immunity, where she came from, & her identity), lies (from her adopted father & about her cyborg implants), and fascinating events (including meeting/confronting the Lunar Queen) that will combine to change her forever.
Text Choice—Rationale, Grade Level/Age & Lexile Level, & Appropriateness:
I chose Cinder since it’s a dystopian novel and my 11th grade-3-wk. lesson plan on dystopian novels will highlight that genre in two ways. During the unit, students will look use two novels, one of their choice and one of the teachers, specifically George Orwell’s 1984 to find, compare, and recognize elements of dehumanization, totalitarianism (in governments), pessimism, stringency, inflexibility, fanaticism, capitalism, corporatism, hedonism, privatization, ethics or any other parallel/opposite elements they can find and relate to with the unit’s concepts.
Cinder is appropriate book for age levels 12-18/grade levels 8-12, with a Lexile measure of 790L/7th grade, and its paperback version contains 448 pages.
I chose Cinder specifically for my unit because of its reviews; many of the reviews touted the book as engaging for both sexes (male/female students), which is something all teachers are looking for in a classroom text. I also felt it was appropriate for this group of students because, although there is a tentative romance between Cinder and Prince Kai, Meyer downplays the passionate component of the book, which many teens appreciate as do parents/administrators. In fact, I feel Disney’s Cinderella has a more passionate kiss (which is G rated), especially since the only kiss Cinder and Prince Kai actually share during this book is one he does not even respond to; it is a one-sided kiss inside a crowded ballroom. I also found the book on the Scholastic Inc. website, which is a great teacher’s reference site for books.
Teaching Ideas:
There are many wonderful ways to incorporate Cinder into your lesson plans.
1. See the text choice section above for the specific ideas on incorporating Cinder into the lesson plan with George Orwell’s 1984.
2. As a cyborg, Cinder has a prosthetic foot, making this book, Cinder, easily paired with The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, whose main character suffers a severe injury/amputation and acquires a prosthesis, after which she then must relearn running. Teachers can find common technologic themes with the prosthetics, and or elements of discriminatory issues, dehumanization, determination, ethics, pessimism, etc. There will be many ways to draw parallels between these books.
3. Cinder is a book dealing with a portion of New Beijing’s population who has lost much of their personal freedoms (the cyborgs). Utilize this book as a comparison to the holocaust victims in Elie Wiesel’s book Night or Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. (Really, any historical holocaust book you would like to pick would serve the intended purpose.) Also, pull in the Declaration of Independence and or the Bill of Rights as Informational texts to compare freedoms in our country today. Have students look at changes in our country’s freedoms since 9/11. Then students can compare freedoms in Cinder, the US past/present, and Night’s holocaust victims (or your chosen historical holocaust book) and note differences. You could even make note of the newer trend to suppress the holocaust as a non-event because the victims are all dying off and therefore the proof is disappearing.
Obstacles:
Some student obstacles encountered/experienced by the techno-advanced reader include them wanting more from the techno-side of Cinder’s story and expressing frustrations from the lack of details. This story is also part of a series, which offers both obstacles and advantages because on one hand it’s going to frustrate your readers when it leaves them hanging on a cliffhanger, and on the other hand it is going to encourage them to read another book to finish the story (depending on the student)…so be prepared.
Obstacles to using Cinder come from parents who might be among those considering it a bastardization of a classic Grimm Brothers Fairy Tale, or those who may be against the concepts of androids and cyborgs as they are put forth in the book. There may also be those put off by the Plague Letumosis, and using the cyborgs for basically lab rats, as they (the cyborgs) are for the most part human. I would remind those said parents that in our own country we adhere to both willing/unwilling medical testing on human subjects still today. For example, parents sign up their babies for FDA-approved drug trials prior to mass production of medications. The baby itself is neither willing nor compensated him/herself. Some parents may consider Cinder too romantic, see explanation in Text Choice above.
An administrator’s response to the use of Cinder, in an extremely conservative climate, might be that the book is too racy; however, I would challenge said administration to actually read the text and not just the reviews, see explanation in Text Choice above. An administrator may also choose to react against Cinder, based on the medical testing aspect, in which case I would remind said administration in our own country we adhere to both willing/unwilling medical testing on human subjects still today. For example, parents sign up their babies for FDA-approved drug trials prior to the mass production of the medications. The baby itself is neither willing nor compensated him/herself.
Know & Understand Before You Start:
Before implementing a lesson utilizing Cinder, I would preface the book with your students by using vocabulary concepts like those listed in 1984’s lesson plan. For example, dehumanization, dystopian, utopian, totalitarianism (in governments), pessimism, stringency, inflexibility, fanaticism, capitalism, corporatism, hedonism, privatization, ethics, or anything else you think may relate to the particular lesson plan you are implementing (or even something linking to a previous lesson).
Works Cited:
Draanen, Wendelin Van. The Running Dream. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Print.
Meyer, Marissa. Cinder. New York: Square Fish, 2013. Print.
Orwell, George, and Erich Fromm (Afterword). 1984. New York: Signet Classic, 1961. Print.
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.
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