Grade 7 · Class Reads · Book guide
The Marrow Thieves
by Cherie Dimaline
In a climate-ravaged future, most people have lost the ability to dream. Indigenous people are hunted because others believe their bone marrow contains a cure, and Frenchie joins a found family travelling north to survive.
Book details
Format
Young-adult dystopian fiction
Suggested age range
Young-adult readers
Why read it together?
A book worth talking about
Métis author Cherie Dimaline centres Indigenous young people, kinship, story, language, resistance, and futurity. The novel supports analysis of how dystopian conventions connect historical and ongoing colonial systems to imagined futures.
- Métis and Indigenous futurity
- Kinship and story
- Colonial systems
- Resistance and survival
Before reading
Get ready to wonder
- How can speculative fiction connect a future danger to historical and present systems?
- Why is it important to centre the creator's Métis context rather than treating Indigenous identity as a plot device?
During and after reading
Talk about the text
- How do coming-to stories build identity and responsibility within the group?
- Which historical and socio-political conditions does the dystopian system echo?
- How do language, dreams, and storytelling operate as both symbols and sources of survival?
Writing invitation
Respond to the book
Analyze how one dystopian element connects historical conditions, current lived experiences, and the novel's imagined future. Centre textual evidence and the author's context.