The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch 
(Scholastic, 2011)

Summary from publisher:
Sometimes the only way to survive is to keep moving.  America is a vast, desolate landscape left ravaged after a brutal war.  Two-thirds of the population are dead from a vicious strain of influenza.  People called the sickness the Eleventh Plague.
Fifteen-year-old Stephen Quinn was born after the war and only knows the life of a salvager.  His family was among the few who survived and took to roaming the country in search of material to trade.  But when Stephen's grandfather dies and his father falls into a coma after an accident, Stephen finds his way to Settler's Landing, a community that seems too good to be true.  There Stephen meets strong, defiant mischievous Jenny, who refuses to accept things as they are.  When they play a prank that goes horribly wrong, chaos erupts, and they find themselves in the midst of a battle that will change Settler's Landing - and their lives - forever.

I purchased this book at our school book fair way back in September, thinking it sounded like a great dystopian for the boys in my class who aren't interested in dystopian-with-love-triangles.  Then my life got busy, and I never got around to reading it.  This is too bad for the kids in my class, as it really was a pretty good story.  With the male protagonist and only a touch of romance, this adventure and action filled story will fill a hole my boys have been finding in the dystopians in my classroom library.

The premise behind the book is pretty scary, because it is all too possible.  We know there are virulent strains of influenza that can wipe out large portions of a population.  Look at the 1918 influenza outbreak for proof, or more recently, H1-N1.  The thought that a war over limited resources would follow such an outbreak is not unreasonable.  When I was a young child, I obsessed over the Cold War with the Soviet Union.  I was always thinking about what my family should do if a nuclear warhead were to be directed at the air force base near the town where I lived (crazy, I know, but true). Television events such as "The Day After" only made my obsession worse.  Now I obsess over things like influenza outbreaks and cyber wars.  Books such as The Eleventh Plague do not do much to assuage those fears!  Perhaps I need to seek help for this!

Boys and girls will both enjoy this great dystopian novel.  It would be a great addition to any middle school classroom library.