St. Louis–based author Soman Chainani spent his years at Harvard studying fairy tales. Then he spent 13 years living in the world of The School for Good and Evil, his popular book-series-turned-Netflix-hit full of magic, mischief, heroes, and happily-ever-afters. Young World, out May 5 from Random House Books for Young Readers, is not that.
“I almost think of Young World as just my second book,” Chainani says. “This mission of reclaiming children’s brains from Disney and giving them a more nuanced view of good and evil was super important to me. But I spent those 13 years touring in addition to writing those books. I went to over 800 schools, and I just noticed such a big change in kids over the years—I just felt like they were increasingly lost…I kept seeing all these different things, and I was writing fairy tales, but I also thought, OK, we’re having problems in this world. We can’t just keep escaping to other ones. What can I do to help kids in this world?”
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His answer was Young World, a new YA political thriller primarily formatted as the diary of a teen boy who makes his way to the Oval Office amid a worldwide political movement known as “Revolting Youth.” The result isn’t some Disney Channel Original Movie version of a kid president who declares longer summer vacations and free ice cream for all. Our hero, Benton Young, is a mixed-race high-school junior from St. Louis who has middling grades, divorced parents, and a crush that he can’t let go of. But thanks to a viral video and a dream that resonates with young people everywhere, he’s thrown into a world where fellow politicians want to sabotage him, international forces work against him, and a make-or-break G8 Summit threatens his future—both physically and professionally.
Research and accuracy were paramount as Chainani imagined the rise of Revolting Youth. Each finished page was handed off to a fact-checker as it was completed, and a producer brought on for potential adaptations was a member of the Obama White House.
“When he read it, I was sweating bullets,” Chainani says. “And he’s like, ‘Oh no, this is very plausible.’ That was a big moment, when he was able to read it and be like, ‘You’ve really got so much of it right.’”
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Benton’s world is populated by characters who bring light and dimension to this tense tale. There are the other young leaders—a data-obsessed German chancellor, a Scandinavian Adonis from Sweden, and an Indian-born British prime minister whose personal entanglements would fill UK scandal sheets, among others—plus Benton’s family and friends, who try to keep him grounded. The White House is full of friends (a thoughtful chef, a bro-y but charming Secret Service agent, a fiery young analyst) and foes (the “zombies,” older establishment politicians who want this kid gone).
Young World quickly travels beyond D.C., though: Benton goes on a dramatic journey from rising star to international fugitive, as a murder at the G8 and a global race for resources trigger events around the globe. The plot feels cinematic, complete with transitional vignettes in the form of classified documents, memes, news stories, and other ephemera—all of it meant to mimic how Benton might keep track of his story.
“I started to have these visions of neon color and a first-person diary and what it would look like for a teenage boy to keep a diary,” Chainani says. “There’d be doodles, there’d be art, there’d be stuff slipped in, there’d be wrinkled papers—it would just be a mess.”
And indeed, Young World is unlike anything else in the space. It’s part graphic novel, part diary, part traditional political thriller, and part instructive text, all wrapped up in a neon package that practically screams, “Look at this!”
“It became about this desire to make everything as ultrarealistic as possible when we’re creating this political revolution and governments are falling to teenagers,” Chainani says. “I just wanted it to feel like you absolutely believe it. And that’s where the visuals in the book help. There’s this idea of feeling almost like a renegade textbook to revolution.”
The hope, according to Chainani, is to convince young readers (and older YA fans) that they have it in them to make change. While they don’t have to go all the way to the presidency on their first attempt—the chaos that unfolds with Benton’s propulsion to the highest office in the land is not, perhaps, the perfect blueprint—they have the power to make a start.
“I’d like [young people] to start taking leadership positions and seeing leadership positions as being punk and being renegade and being cool,” Chainani says. “I’m partnering with Run for Something, the organization that gets young people to run for office, because I want young people to start seeing themselves as leaders, not waiting for the adults to either save them or waiting to become an adult, because it’s going to be too late. They have to do it now.”
For more from Chainani, head to the St. Louis County Library’s Clark Family Branch on May 21. The author will discuss Young World with Michelle Li, followed by a signing line. Young World and additional titles will be available from The Novel Neighbor.
