The Worst of Humanity

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 The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau is the first book in a YA dystopian/sci-fi trilogy that follows sixteen-year-old Malencia "Cia" Vale and her friends as they navigate a world that has been devastated by the Seven Stages War. Released five years after The Hunger Games, The Testing rides the wave of popularity that Katniss Everdeen spawned for dystopian books in the Young Adult demographic. While there are many similarities between these two novels, Charbonneau's book is its own story, that, like THG, has a plot filled with messages for adolescent readers.

Cia starts as a young, somewhat naïve girl who wants nothing more than to do well in school so she can go onto participate in The Testing, a program that helps the leaders of her country determine who will become the leaders of the future. Like many adolescents in today's world, Cia deals with the stress caused by school work and relationships with her peers, and she has to deal with a large family—where she is her parent's only daughter out of five children. 

When Cia learns that she has been chosen for The Testing and arrives in the capital city with her classmates, she learns that the candidates from the rest of the country are even more competitive than the ones she left behind. And, these candidates will do anything to succeed. While in the capital, Cia sees the worst humanity has to offer: cheaters, liars, traitors, and murderers. Cia loses several friends and allies throughout the Test and, she is forced to kill as well in order to stay alive.

The Testing is important for adolescents to read because it deals with issues that are personal, and easily relatable to most teenagers, but also because this book talks about large, world-altering issues that should be talked about in schools. The Testing talks about how important it is for leaders to be trustworthy and for the people living in the present to understand and learn form people's mistakes in the past. These topics can spark conversations in classrooms for people to talk about what makes a good leader, both in the classroom and on larger scales. Students can also hold conversations about the decisions world leaders in recent years and months have made, and how the actions of the officials representing them will have world altering consequences for years to come.

The Testing is entertaining, emotional, and essential for adolescent readers because of the the issues present in the book and conversations that they can spark.

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