Among the Hidden

 Margaret Haddix is the author of awesome series Shadow Children. In her first book of the series Among the Hidden she explains a grizzly tail of an over populated country that will take kids away from their family's due to a population control law. This is a brilliant work of fiction but it seems very real because of the fact there are actually countries that have population laws today.

In this first book it starts by sharing a little of Luke's life. Luke is the main character in this book and that's who you follow around the entire time. Luke's story is really sad, he was born into a country that is over populated and is forced to live in hiding because each family is only allowed to have two kids and Luke is the third. This means Luke's family can either pay a large fine or lose him to the government. Sadly Luke's family cannot afford to pay the fine so they have to hide him at all times.

With Luke's family being extremely poor they are farmer in the middle of nowhere and unless you’re a government official you're pretty much looked down upon, just as Luke's family is. Growing up wasn't that bad for Luke since they live miles from a town. Luke could go outside and play and be pretty much be a normal kid most of the time. That all changed very suddenly when construction machines came into their little corner of the world and started to build big houses for barons, or the extremely wealthy people.

As the story goes on Luke see's something suspicious from one of the barons windows and sneaks out to check it out. When he gets there he finds a girl, his age! The only problem is that Luke knows this is another third child as he's seen the other two kids in the family out and about. Luke begins to meet with this new child Jen, who is a rich little kid but is still an illegal third child. Therefor she is still bound to the same laws because as it later explains even though her gamut can pay the fine her father would lose his job. So with daily meetings Jen comes up with a plan to protest population laws. Her plan is extremely risky and could turn out to be a deadly mistake.

This is a book I've read a few times because every time I read it I pull something new from it. It's extremely exciting and it has a quick pace throughout the book. The theme or deeper meaning is blindingly obvious and the author is clearly trying to say we need to help kids like this that are out there in the world hiding. I really enjoyed this book a lot, it's also good for everyone since there's no cussing, or violence, or really anything that would make this book limited to a certain reader.