No. Teen dystopia. Innocent country girl becomes freak experiment in the big city. It wasn't as exciting as the premise made it out to be, so I didn't end up finishing it. A shame, almost. Maybe it would have gotten better. ( )

The story is set in a modern industrialised city in the near future where advertising is everything. In this story it is a constant stream of inescapable information and corporations sponsor everything, even schools and their lessons.
Barrett Trent was orphaned as a baby and brought up by his uncle. He has been raised outside mainstream society in a eco-cult called Simplicity, protected from the outside world. When his uncle dies, an aunt he has never met decides he must come and live with her and her family and he is suddenly thrown into an ad saturated world. It is a world where advertising is a constant stream of inescapable information and corporations sponsor everything from music to school. He finds the “Chattering World” very hard to take.
His spoilt cousin, Taylor, is not impressed. She is one of the in group and Barrett and his lack of sophistication could affect her reputation. Aunt Cara and Uncle Adrian have a hidden agenda. They work for a company called Ads for Life, which promotes advertising and uses it covertly for political gain. Barrett provides them perfect opportunity to study the impact of advertising on an untouched mind.
Barrett is initially unaware that he is being used as a guinea pig for their experiments but the experiment leads to both Barrett and Taylor being put into a very dangerous situation. Barrett becomes a much more resilient and clever adversary than they think possible.
A plausible novel where the advertising-of-the-future controls most aspects of life in a consumer-driven society. ( )

An excerpt of the novel can be read on the author’s website:
http://www.clairecarmichael.com/

ADS R US

READING GUIDE

If you think life is intense now, for Barrett and Taylor it’s, like, totally dire.

Ads R Us is set in a modern city in the near future, where advertising is a constant stream of noise and information, and corporations sponsor everything from music to schools.

Teenager Barrett Trent has been raised in total isolation from mainstream society in an eco-cult called Simplicity, but after the death of his uncle, he must now live in the city with his rich and powerful Aunt Kara and Uncle Adrian, and spoiled cousin, Taylor.

As Barrett finds out, his aunt and uncle have a hidden agenda—there is a lot to gain from finding out the effects of advertising on an untouched mind. Barrett is the perfect guinea pig for their experiments.

But Barrett may prove harder to crack than they think—and Taylor is certainly not the cousin he expected...

ABOUT THE BOOK

The novel is set in the near future, where advertising has become an inescapable assault on one’s senses 24/7. It is not only a weapon of mass persuasion for commerce, but is also covertly being employed to shape and control the thoughts and beliefs of the general population for political purposes.

Ads R Us is told in alternating points of view:

(1) Barrett:

Orphaned when a baby, Barrett has been brought up by his Uncle Paul, leader of an eco-cult called Simplicity, a self-supporting, closed community who reject the modern world and all its electronic buzz. Members rarely interact with anyone from the scathingly named Chattering World. Barrett’s education has been directed toward practical skills and maths, science and language.

(2) Taylor:

Taylor is Barrett’s cousin. She is the daughter of Barrett’s aunt, Kara Trent and Professor Adrian Stokes, a specialist in the psychology of persuasion. Taylor’s mother is the head of the hugely influential Ads 4 Life Council.

When Barrett’s Uncle Paul is killed by lightning while working in the fields, Barrett’s only living adult relative is Kara Trent. She comes to Simplicity to take him back to the city. Barrett is wary, as his dead uncle often warned him that Barrett’s aunt and her husband are guilty of promoting advertising—an abomination, blighting human society.

Barrett is forced to leave behind him everyone to whom he’s ever felt close, and is catapulted into a world stranger than he could imagine. His cousin Taylor looks at him with scorn. He’ll never be one of the in-crowd, she decides. Having been brought up in isolation, Barrett doesn’t know slang terms, or anything about popular music and fashion. He’s never watched TV, listened to a radio, used a computer, gone to a movie. He’s a total outsider.

Taylor has her own worries. Secretly, she’s convinced she’s adopted. Her father usually indulges her, but Taylor’s mother is a cold woman, who has always used withdrawal of affection as a punishment. Taylor is half right—her father is her biological parent, but Kara Trent is not her mother.

Neither Taylor nor Barrett realize that they are human guinea pigs. From early childhood Taylor has unwittingly been part of a study probing her susceptibility at each developmental stage to various forms of advertising and persuasion. Now Barrett, a blank slate as far as the modern world is concerned, has become a valuable research property.

While having a checkup at the dentist, Barrett is given an anesthetic so that tiny electronic instruments can be installed in his teeth to track his movements and record his reactions. All advertisements are made with an electronic signature, which instantly identifies them, so it will be possible to chart the specific ads to which he’s exposed.

Although she doesn’t know it, Taylor has been wired the same way for years. Now Barrett’s reactions can be compared to hers. Not only will he provide data, unsullied by prior experience, for on-going experiments on receptiveness to marketing techniques.

A close friend of Barrett’s parents is Maynard Rox, an increasingly powerful and charismatic politician who has won wide financial support in the business community because of his attempts to gut consumer laws and remove mandatory government standards that impede private enterprise’s ability to sell products and services. Secretly Rox has larger ambitions. With Kara and her husband’s expert assistance, he intends to use all the resources of persuasion to subvert the electoral process and destroy individual freedoms. His ultimate aim is to seize power and become virtual dictator of the country.

ADA (Against Deceit in Advertising) is a grassroots movement devoted to exposing the hidden political and economic influences wielded by the purveyors of advertising. In particular, ADA has in its sights the activities of both Ads 4 Life (the organization Barrett’s aunt heads) and influential politicians such as Maynard Rox.



SOME THEMES

* the role of advertising/persuasion

* the stranger in a strange land—outsiders and their impact on society

* cliques in school (the "in" crowd and the roles people play)

* power, authority and responsibility

* the ultimate treachery—betrayal by one’s parents

* the nature of personal freedom



DISCUSSION POINTS

In the nineteenth century, Lord Acton famously wrote: "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Looking at the world you live in, do you find this statement is as true today as it was over a hundred years ago?

Would YOU be corrupted by absolute power?

Some people say that privacy is dead, that it is almost impossible to keep secret personal information. If this is true, is a bad thing? After all, unless you have something to hide, what does it matter what other people know about you?

Should parents have special rights as far as tracking where their children are through GPS in vehicles and mobile phones? Who else, if anyone, should have that right?

Is it wrong to manipulate people if the aim is for good? Should advertising always be absolutely true? Doesn’t everyone know that ads exaggerate, accentuate the positive and ignore anything negative about the product?

What do you see is the role of education? To indoctrinate society’s standards? To turn out people with the same values and goals? To prepare each person for a successful life as a member of society? To develop individual skills and talents? Something else?

Barrett is an outsider in what is to him an entirely foreign society with different values, different experiences, different measures of success. What does Barrett bring from Simplicity that will help him in this brave new world? What will hinder him?

If Taylor were to find herself abruptly placed in the eco-cult of Simplicity, what would she miss most from her modern world.? What would she hate the most? Is there anything she would appreciate and value?

Persuasion Checklist:

Every day we are surrounded by attempts to convince us to think in certain ways, purchase particular products, take specific actions.

Ask yourself:

1. What am I being persuaded to do or to believe?

2. Who is doing the persuading?

3. Why? What is the motive behind the persuasion?

4. What will be the result if I am persuaded? ( )

Set in the not too distant future where everyone can be bought as a way of advertising things. Barret has spent his entire life away from the “Chattering World” in a cult called “Simplicity”. When his uncle is hit by lightning, B is dragged into a world of Oms (like ipods, mp3s, phone, internet all in one) where teachers wear slogans on their chest like “Today’s chemistry lesson proudly brought to you by…”and billboards change as you pass them to suit your demographic. Where a terrorist group hijacks shopping center screens to protest at all the brainwashing and parents implant their children so they know where they are. B & Taylor (his cousin & a by-product of this society) uncover a sinister plot that involves a terrible plague, a political career & the concept of B as the ultimate subject to study. Thought-provoking.p.34-41 [B finds out about the world very quickly in the back of his aunt’s car as they discuss reality TV etc.]

No. Teen dystopia. Innocent country girl becomes freak experiment in the big city. It wasn't as exciting as the premise made it out to be, so I didn't end up finishing it. A shame, almost. Maybe it would have gotten better. ( )