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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

Sometime in the not-so-distant future, The United Safer States of America imprisons twenty-four percent of its population for breaking any number of laws, including Road Rage, saying mean things to others, and drinking alcohol. Bo Marsden has had a history of anger management “issues” and has landed himself in a work camp, where he makes frozen pizzas. The camp’s warden has a great deal of nostalgia for the old days when football was still legal, and Bo manages to get on the prison team. For the first time in his life, he is allowed to run without wearing safety padding and a helmet, just like his grandpa used to do. It’s terrifying, and it’s liberating . . . sort of. To be truly free, Bo needs to break out of the confines of camp, and, more important, the confines of his own mind. As often as he has found himself in trouble for violating the laws, it’s never occurred to Bo that there might be something wrong with the reasoning behind them. In a hilarious satire, Pete Hautman imagines a world where safety and conformity are more important than liberty and creativity. (Age 12 and older)

CCBC Choices 2007 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2007. Used with permission.

From School Library Journal

August 1, 2006
Gr 8 Up -In 2076 in the United Safer States of America, verbal abuse, obesity, and dangerous activities are against the law. Helmets and health food are de rigueur, and sports are either outlawed or radically changed (runners - track times have slowed appreciably because of the bulky safety equipment required). The penalty for breaking any of the rules is a lengthy prison term, and 24 percent of the population is incarcerated and responsible for doing much of the country -s manual labor -without pay. For Bo Marsten, 16, the punishment for allegedly spreading a rash through school is a prison sentence, which is suspended, but he then goes to jail for lack of self-control after he hits a classmate. Bo has the opportunity to reduce his sentence when he -s chosen for the prison -s (illegal) football team, but the sadistic coach is determined that his players win at any cost. This odd pairing of satire and sports thriller is carried along by the protagonist -s confident narrative voice. The angry teen is struggling to explore his options in a world that has little concern for his emotional well-being. The satire is obvious but astute, and Bo -s development is convincing. The many threads that run through this book may overwhelm some readers, but there is much for them to ponder and the overall effect is fresh." -Sarah Couri, New York Public Library"

Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Horn Book

July 1, 2006
"Feed" meets "Holes" on a futuristic gridiron in the United Safer States of America, where citizens must wear helmets when walking and get a prescription for aspirin. After punching someone, Bo is sent to a jail/pizza factory and is tapped to join the prison's illegal football team. Loopily inventive touches combine with solid character development for a thoroughly enjoyable yarn.

(Copyright 2006 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

From Booklist

Starred review from May 15, 2006
Gr. 9-12. It's very likely that the world has never seen a sports novel quite like this one, which evokes Louis Sachar's " Holes "(1998), M. T. Anderson's " Feed "(2004), and Chris Lynch's explorations of male aggression in " Inexcusable" (2005), all the while avoiding the merest whisper of predictability. In the United Safer States of America of the late twenty-first century, a national obsession with safety has criminalized even minor "antisocial impulses." Bo's dad "was put away in '73 for roadrage"; the teen's own anger issues likewise land him in one of the country's privatized penal colonies. There, he makes pizzas for McDonald's until the camp's sadistic overseer recruits him to play football. The illegal sport is brutally violent but exhilarating--and Bo, a gifted athlete, slowly begins to question his culture's basic assumptions, identifying with crotchety Gramps' view that "the country went to hell the day we decided we'd rather be safe than free." At times, Hautman takes his signature eclecticism to an extreme, placing Bo in confrontations with polar bears, an intrusive artificial intelligence entity, and officials who suspect him of causing a rash outbreak. Like the author's similarly audacious " Godless "(2004)" , "though, this will satisfy teens with an appetite for big questions and gleeful ambiguities, while ratcheting up the mind-trip factor with a gimlet-eyed extrapolation of the future.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)

From Publisher's Weekly

Starred review from May 8, 2006
Hautman (Invisible
) explores the modernday tension between safety and freedom in this intelligent and darkly comic satire set 70 years in the future. Despite the daily dose of sedative required for all teens in the United Safer States of America, Bo Marsten reacts badly when he sees his girlfriend with his track rival and nemesis. "The locks and harnesses and chains of self-control snapped, one after another, like Frankenstein's monster breaking loose from his bonds." In Bo's society, even minor infractions result in prison terms, because their labor "makes this country run." Sentenced to work at a pizza factory in the Canadian tundra (the USSA annexed Canada in 2055), Bo finds himself a candidate for the warden's favorite pastime—watching his inmates crush each other's skulls on the gridiron. Football is outlawed, so only outlaws can play (think The Longest Yard
with bears). In the meantime, Bork, the A.I. that Bo had been creating in science class, achieves self-awareness and independently tracks Bo down in prison with a plan to spring him—but can Bo survive on the outside? Hautman's vision of a futuristic nation wracked by litigiousness and terrorism is sharply observed—and frightening. Bo's Gramps (born in 1990 when kids could still run without protective safety gear) incisively sums up the book's undercurrent: "I think the country went to hell the day we decided we'd rather be safe than free." This thought-provoking and highly entertaining dystopian fantasy is certain to spark discussion among teens. Ages 12-up.

From AudioFile Magazine

Providing as many voices as there are characters, Andy Paris's skilled narration effortlessly leads the listener through this dystopic science fiction story. In 2076 in the United Safer States of America, having a temper is a serious problem. Bo Marsden is sentenced to three years in a prison work camp for having one fight too many. From the fights on the high school grounds to the illegal football games on the frozen tundra at the work camp, listeners will be glued to their seats to learn the next turn of events. All the while, Paris's smooth, vivid style keeps pace with the fast-paced action and dramatic story line. K.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine