If your students need a story about escaping the confines of technology, the half-life that is living in virtual reality 24/7, or an altruistic adventure, Cleo Porter and the Body Electric by Jake Burt is your book. This is a great title to offer in your Dystopian Book Club unit.
Cleo Porter and the Body Electric by Jake Burt
Genre: Dystopian
Age Range: 11+
Summary: Cleo is 12-years-old, studying to be a doctor, and has never left her apartment. That’s because the government constructed huge apartment buildings to protect people from a devastating influenza pandemic. Drones and machines service the buildings so that no one ever leaves their unit. Everything runs smoothly — until the day when someone else’s life-saving medicine is delivered to Cleo’s apartment. Cleo sees only one option: to leave her apartment and deliver the misplaced medicine herself. In doing so, she discovers the truth — part ugly, part beautiful — about her society.
Teaching with Cleo Porter and the Body Electric
Recommend this book to students who:
🕹️ Are intrigued by but not yet ready for Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Both books toggle between virtual and real lives, as well as how the state of the real world contributed to the intoxicating growth of virtual reality.
📚 Have devoured other dystopian stories, such as The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, The Town With No Mirrors by Christina Collins, or The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau.
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Read cleo porter and the body electric for these themes:
Technological dependency: Cleo’s journey reveals the incredible mechanical systems that sustain their way of life AND the dark, deadly side of when the machines fail.
Isolation: Inside, families are physically isolated but virtually connected. Outside, Cleo discovers her first in-person community, but it’s forced to be isolated from society.
Autonomy: People in Cleo’s world can choose their jobs, their hobbies, their food, their friends. They can choose how they spend their time and energy. But are all those choices enough to provide autonomy if they can never leave their apartment?
My Final Two Cents: I was surprised, at first, to realize that this book was written before COVID. But by being a “what if?” story that is not specific to COVID, it allows readers to think about what could happen without dredging up the stress, anxiety, and trauma from their own experiences.
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