Switch

By: A.S. King

Narrated by: A.S. King

A surreal and timely novel about the effects of isolation and what it means to be connected to the world from the Printz Award-winning author of Dig.

Time has stopped. It's been June 23, 2020 for nearly a year as far as anyone can tell. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the worldwide crisis. Not everyone is on board though. Javelin-throwing prodigy Truda Becker is pretty sure her "Solution Time" class won't solve the world's problems, but she does have a few ideas what might. Truda lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father protects every day by nailing it into hundreds of progressively larger boxes. But Truda's got a crow bar, and one way or another, she's going to see what happens when she flips the switch.

Critic reviews

★ "Timely and extraordinary, teen readers will find themselves immersed in this timeless world."—SLJ, starred review

★ "An unsettling but emotionally resonant novel for our own unsettling times."—Bookpage, starred review

★ “King explores the meaning of time and the toxicity of family secrets. This inventive, surreal novel’s dedication, ‘For the class of 2020,’ makes a direct address to real-life teens’ ‘lost’ COVID-19 year.” —Horn Book, starred review

"A work of literary genius."—Booklist

"Printz Award winner King returns with another surrealist masterpiece."—Kirkus

"Poignant, propulsive, and profound."—Publishers Weekly

A BookPage Best Book of 2021
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2021

The woman of thought

This book is amazing, the intresting story makes you follow Truda along with her Plutchik's clock idea. May we all find our own time!

Slaughterhouse 5 for Young Adults & Youth

This book does an excellent job of reframing the lessons a reader may pick up from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and reframes it into a story about a teenage girl learning how to help her and her family heal, while taking its own spin on time manipulation as a device to understand how to break free of the lies we tell ourselves.