Streams of Babel

Title: Streams of Babel
Author: Carol Plum-Ucci
ISBN: 0152165568

Plot Summary: Cora Holman is a high school outcast with a tormented, drug-addicted mother. When her mother and several neighbors die of a mysterious new ailment, Cora and her friends become increasingly alarmed when they too start getting sick. She and her friend Scott discover an abandoned store which appears to have been occupied by, and bears graffiti from, terrorists. Meanwhile, Shahzad Hamdani, a young Pakistani computer genius, has begun to notice some disturbing internet chatter among terrorist groups regarding a new weapon known only as Red Vinegar. Shahzad and Cora's lives will intersect as they both try to figure out what is killing people in Cora's neighborhood, who is causing it, and how it can be stopped.


Critical Evaluation: This book's scope is highly ambitious. Cora's life alone encompasses the issues of social ostracism, drug addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress, burgeoning romance, illness, and conspiracies. Plum-Ucci, however, intersects her perspective with those of her peers as well as that of Shahzad. In addition to being a computer whiz, Shahzad is also fluent in a number of different South Asian and Middle Eastern languages, and is able to follow the same terrorist cell around on the internet, despite the fact that they keep switching locations, identities, and, disconcertingly enough, languages. His character is not as fully developed as Cora's, although he often provides trenchant commentary on American society from an outsider's perspective. Plum-Ucci's skill lies in gradually weaving this disparate threads together into a narrative that is both cohesive and frighteningly plausible.

Reader's Annotation: Cora is an American teenager whose mother, friends and neighbors have started dying of a mysterious disease; Shahzad is a Pakistani computer genius who discovers a disturbing bioterrorism plot on the internet. Their lives will intersect across different countries and backgrounds as they both try to unravel a plot with the potential to wreak global havoc.

About the Author: Carol Plum-Ucci was born in 1957 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She grew up on the island of Brigantine in New Jersey, where her father and grandmother ran a funeral parlor. She graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor's degree in Communications. After graduation, she worked as a freelance writer, then worked in various capacities for the Miss American Pageant until the publication of her first novel, The Body of Christopher Creed. Her Young Adult novels reflect themes of suspense and isolation, and often take place on barrier islands similar to her childhood home. She currently lives in Southern New Jersey with her husband and two children.

Genre: Fiction: Terrorism

Curriculum Ties: Current Events, Computer Science

Booktalking Ideas:

Hook: What happened to Cora's mother in Mogadishu?
Approach: Scene and character-based
Ideas for Booktalk: The events that occurred there, what happened to Cora's mother and how it affected her. In turn, discuss how her behavior, choices and trauma affected Cora, who does not know a lot about herself or her mother, including who her father is. How does Cora find out about her mother's trauma, and what is her reaction?

Hook: "Computers have blurred the line between child and adult, because in the land of computers, children are the men, and the men are the children." (p. 69)
Approach: Character-based.
Ideas for Booktalk: Shahzad's computing abilities are his ticket to success: a career, partial ownership of an internet cafe, and ultimately, his ticket out of Karachi and into the United States. His late father recognized that the younger someone is, the more likely they are to be good with computers, thereby upending adults' traditional superiority to children in Pakistani society. How is Shahzad a rebel, and how is he a product of his surroundings? He is only 16, but in many ways is mature beyond his years. Discuss how his talents, upbringing and circumstances have made him that way.


Reading Level/Interest Age: High school

Challenge Issues: Violence, drug abuse, offensive language.
Cora comes from a profoundly dysfunctional home, with an absent father and a drug-addicted, possibly mentally unstable mother who self-medicates to cope with profound physical and mental trauma. Although her mother's angry rants are disturbing and often potentially offensive, they serve to develop Cora's character further and deepen her motivations for behaving as she does. The violence and disturbing imagery inherent in acts of bioterrorism is part of the nature of the plot; without it, the reader would not get as strong a sense of the very real danger threatening the main characters. I would not recommend this book for younger readers in the age group, as much because of its convoluted plot as because of its more disturbing aspects; however, for those mature enough to deal with its content, this book offers a riveting view of the bioterrorism threat from young peoples' perspectives.

Why I Chose This Book: I was drawn to this book as much by its fascinating and ambitious plot as by the gripping contemporary relevance of the plot's hook. Plum-Ucci's work on this book proves that literature written with teens in mind can still be sophisticated, complex, relevant, and suspenseful. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good suspense thriller, and look forward to reading its upcoming sequel, Fire Will Fall.