Shadow Children is a series of seven books by Margaret Peterson Haddix about a dystopian country which suffers food shortages due to a drought and the effects of the government's totalitarian attempts to control resources as a way to solidify its power. The Population Police enforce the government's Population Law, killing or imprisoning "shadow children," any child born after his or her first two siblings. In some cases, a parent may choose to forge a child's identification card so a shadow child can live a normal life.
Inspiration and Development
Margaret Peterson Haddix began writing Among the Hidden after discussions with her husband regarding if they wanted to have more than two children, which developed into conversations concerning overpopulation, the earth's limited resources, and China's One Child Policy. The conversations gradually led Haddix into creating Luke Garner, a twelve-year-old boy forced to live with strict controls and limited choices that result in him spending his life in hiding due to a government that said that he would not have the right to exist. Though Haddix had not intended to continue Among the Hidden, she began to explore other characters and other tangents in the subsequent six books in the series.
Setting
The Shadow Children sequence is set in a country where the government has enforced strict population control laws in order to control overpopulation after environmental conditions have severely limited resources, particularly food. As a result, it is against the law for families to have more than two children; the law is strictly enforced by the Population Police, who are said to conduct raids specifically to find and punish families who have more than two children. The Population Police, due to its power, is usually corrupt and holds control over government policies. Unknown to the common public, the elite of society, known as Barons, have used their wealth and influence to live lavishly and circumvent the strict population and food laws. Due to these circumstances, the third children of ordinary people are hidden and denied opportunities, often at great expense, and are denied the right to exist. In creating the setting, Haddix did not specify the exact time and place for the story in order for readers to consider that the events could happen in the United States if droughts, famine, and extreme environmental changes occurred. Similarly, she elected not to give a precise time period for the story in order to encourage readers not to dismiss the plausibility of the events in the story.
