Step 2: Locate, read, and report on a variety of Canadian materials for children
throughout the term. Your reading log should include:
• Bibliographic information (title, author, publishing information)
• Brief content/plot summary (3-5 sentences)
• Brief personal response/reaction to the item (3-5 sentences)
• Reader’s advisory information (e.g. themes, subjects, age level, etc.)

gryphonThe Gryphon Project, by Carrie Mac * Puffin Canada, 2009

Phoenix lives in a world not too far removed from our own.  She goes to school, idolizes her big brother, and tries not to dwell too much on her own death. It’s difficult though; she’s died twice, and her best friend can be clueless about what a sensitive subject her ‘death days’ are.

In The Gryphon Project, Mac has created an entirely believable universe where classes are sharply divided by how many ‘recons’ a person gets (the highest up are the threefers, who are brought back three times if they die before their time, right on down to the nofers, who live on the fringes of society, and once they’re dead, are dead forever.

When Phoenix’s brother Gryphon dies in a mysterious accident, she’s forced to confront the rules that determine who lives and who dies. The private company that owns the technology that controls recons, Chrysalis, believes Gryphon’s death to have been a suicide, meaning he might stay dead forever. Phoenix must discover what really happened, a quest that brings her face to face with the underlying injustices of the recon system.

This book was engrossing, the kind of story that sneaks into your thoughts and has you sneaking off for surreptitious reads throughout the day. I picked it up randomly at a bookstore while I was up visiting my grandmother in Vancouver, lured more by the bright orange “Canadian Author!” sticker than anything else.

But once I picked the book up, I couldn’t put it down. It deals with subjects I could talk about for days (the inequity of medical care, the ethics of extending life, the dicey confusion of life inside high school clique), and it does so in a fast paced, engaging, and most importantly non-didactic way (there’s nothing I hate more than a book that’s blatantly trying to teach me a lesson). Though set in a future world, the situations the characters face are believable, and have clear parallels in the contemporary world, making them seem all the more immediate.

The Gryphon Project deals with some heavy subject matter, but nothing that adolescents can’t handle, and nothing they aren’t already preoccupied by (death, love, and injustice? Welcome to the mind of a sixth grader). The publisher’s website recommends the book for readers ages twelve and up, and I have to agree — I could easily recommend this book to sixth graders on through adults particularly those who enjoy sci-fi with a bit social commentary thrown in, such as Scott Westerfield’s Uglies or John Christopher’s White Mountains trilogy.