Expiration Day

Gr 9 Up—It's the year 2049, and human fertility has drastically declined worldwide. On the brink of a societal collapse, the Oxted Corporation developed teknoids, highly sophisticated robots that stand in for children and are leased to surrogate parents. These teknoids are virtually indistinguishable from human children, and society has become relatively normalized to their presence. This is the world that 11-year-old Tania Deeley inhabits. As she starts secondary school, she begins to wonder which of her friends and classmates are human and which are robots. Even scarier, teknoids are returned to the Oxted Corporation on their 18th birthdays—they are truly children without a future. As Tania moves through adolescence, she begins to rebel more and more against a society in which teknoids are second-class citizens who are "deactivated" at age 18. This is an in-depth exploration into a dystopian society and what it truly means to be human, with many universal teen themes as well: music, romance, body image, family issues. Tania and her friends have believably complex relationships, with the added stress of figuring out who is and is not a teknoid and what that means for relationships. Taking place over several years, the story line, told through diary entries, moves at an uneven pace at times, especially as it races (confusingly) to the end. Still, fans of sci-fi and dystopian fiction will appreciate this tale.—Jenny Berggren, formerly at New York Public Library