When she returns home from summer camp, Camden Douglas finds that her best friend Mitch is running with a new group. They're followers of an older teen who calls himself WT-3 and tells the "kidsters" that "grownies" are "double ungood" bosses who give children no rights. Miffed at her busy parents, Cadmen plunges in, but a series of nightmarish dreams reveal the truth.
Development
Linda Woolverton was a CBS employee when she penned Star Wind during her lunch breaks. It was her first book and was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which would also publish her second book, Running Before the Wind.
Reviews
"When she returns home from summer camp, Camden Douglas finds that her best friend Mitch is running with a new group. They're followers of an older teen who calls himself WT-3 and tells the "kidsters" that "grownies" are "double ungood" bosses who give children no rights. WT-3 also shows them The Game, a consciousness-altering ritual that gives them the sensation of flying. Miffed at her busy parents, Camden plunges in but a series of nightmarish dreams reveal the truth. WT-3 is from a totalitarian world where an oppressive Word Tax is enforced by Word Police. While giving the children a simple slang, WT-3's been draining their brains of all they've learned. Although the allegorical dream world gets a bit didactic, this is a fine novel with surprising twists and a particularly astute portrayal of the allure and danger for young people of secret societies, cults and drugs." Publishers Weekly
"Grade 6 Up Camden Douglas, after a month of summer camp, finds her buddy Mitch and her friends in the thrall of a strange teenager known as WT-3. Calling themselves "Kidsters" and replacing normal speech with "The Words", they gather daily to stare into WT-3's power-unit and play the addicting "Game". At night, Camden's sleep is disturbed by the Star Wind which carries her to the bronze planet. There the evil "Teacher" and the Word Police steal words from the minds of the inhabitants. Camden, revolting against the teaching of WT-3, is thrown out of the Kidsters. She slowly regains her lost ability to read and, following WT-3 down the Path of Light to the bronze planet, defeats the evil Teacher with the help of her indomitable cat Maggie. The book contains potentially fascinating pieces, yet is too fragmented to be believable. It jumps back and forth between dream and reality without letting readers become involved in either. Too much is unexplained. "The Words" with which the Kidsters address each other are hardly distinguishable from current teenage slang. Characters fluctuate without transition between flat extremes - the parents as ultra-reasonable or real jerks, Camden as rotten Kidster or too good to be true. Important characters like Mitch, WT-3 and the Teacher are not developed at all. The exception is Maggie, the cat, she's great. Readers will agree with Camden as, toward the end of the book, she snarls, "I've just about had enough of you and your power-units and your secret language and your stupid Game." Suggest Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 instead." School Library Journal
"Woolverton's creative dramatic experience shows in this book; it's action filled." Voice of Youth Advocates
