Reviewed by Karin Perry for TeensReadToo.com

Picture, if you will, life in the year 2076. You are living in The United Safer States of America and things such as obesity, verbal abuse, and dangerous activities are against the law. The legal driving age is twenty-six. Even sports such as football are illegal. Sports that are allowed are hindered due to all the safety gear the participants are required to wear. This is the world that sixteen-year-old Bo Marsten inhabits.

Bo has inherited a bit of a temper from his father who has been in prison since 2073 for road rage. He has been in trouble at school many times for "failing to control his antisocial impulses," but when he is falsely accused of causing a rash that spreads throughout the school, his anger gets the best of him and he assaults a classmate. This action lands him in a work camp in the middle of the Canadian tundra that is surrounded by hungry polar bears.

The work camp Bo is sent to is a factory that makes pizzas. He becomes a member of a four man team with the responsibility of using the pepperoni gun. Each pull of the trigger on the pepperoni gun delivers twenty-six pepperoni on each pizza. When the team works in sync, life isn't so bad. There is only one group that causes Bo problems while he is there, the Goldshirts. The Goldshirts are an elite group at the pizza factory that have special privileges like a variety of food, when the others only have defective pizzas to eat for every meal, every day. The Goldshirts main job is to play football for the warden.

All new editions to the work camp eventually have a tryout in front of the warden. This entails running and catching a pass. If you catch it, you become a Goldshirt and are placed on the team. Bo makes the team and experiences physical activity without protective gear for the first time in his life. The warden requires that the team practice every day for several hours in order to prepare for an illegal game with another work camp. If you want to remain a Goldshirt, you play even if you are injured.

After surviving work camp and brutal football games, Bo, with the help of an unlikely attorney, is released from his sentence and allowed to go home. Bo begins to think about life in the USSA and considers where else he can go that would allow more freedom.

Pete Hautman has written a unique sports novel for the sci-fi/fantasy lover. This interesting look at what might happen to a society more concerned with safety than freedom is a page-turner. The reader will enjoy comparing today's life with the life Hautman has created. ( )

This is an interesting concept, which doesn't seem very unlikely - I can definitely see us getting to the point where "walking" will seem to dangerous. Especially since I can remember playing on playgrounds that were metal and poured concrete without fancy shade tents... ( )

In a future America, where safety is of the utmost importance and people are sent to corporate work camps for a whole host of offenses, Bo is accused of causing a rash that impacts his entire school. He's packed off to a work camp in the tundra that is focused on making pizza. The warden of the camp has a love for football and forces his wards to play on the team in exchange for special food rations. Bo's school artificial intelligence project, Bork, seems to have developed sentient thought and starts to shake things up. ( )

This novel is very entertaining. It is as much packed with action as with humor and satire.The protagonist, Bo Marsten, breaks one law after another in the United Safer States of America, towards the end of the 21st century. He is sent for 3 years to the Canadian tundra, at apizza factory where he has to survive the hard work and illegal football pracices or be polar bear food. As the events in his life unfold eveyrthing is being ridiculed and exposed, at times with humor, and at other times with downright harsh sarcasm - from the obsession with safety, to big business mergers and the government itself. Kids will love the action, and relate to Bo's high school experiences and the way he feels. They might even enjoy the intellectual game of trying to keep track of all the things the author is denouncing with irony and satire sprinkled throughout the book. ( )

I thought this was a pretty good book. It was an interesting take on how things could be. I enjoyed reading about how everyday companies like McDonalds and Coca-Cola became a major part of life in the future. It was interesting how Mr. Hautman decided to make prison labor one of the major factors in the economy of the future. Overall I enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

Rash by Pete Hautman is a exciting book about a boy named Bo Marsten who lives in the USSA. USSA stands for the United Safer States of America where most of today’s most basic activates are now illegal. Things like walking are illegal without the proper equipment and protection. After Bo breaks the law 3 times, he is sent to a work camp where he is forced to make pizzas for no pay at all. While there, his warden recruits him to play on an illegal football team. After training for weeks, Bo is sent to the rival Coke work camp where he is to play their football team. Will Bo keep playing this illegal sport he loves, or end up getting in more trouble? The cover of this book is very cool with a polar bear in the background. The polar bear ends up being very important in this book. I would recommend this book to any sports lover or sci-fi lover. It contains a lot of both of them and they go together really well. ( )

Kearsten says: This is an interesting concept, which doesn't seem very unlikely - I can definitely see us getting to the point where 'walking' will seem to dangerous. Especially since I can remember playing on playgrounds that were metal and poured concrete without fancy shade tents... ( )

It's the late 21st century, and things are different. Bo's father and brother are in prison, like 1/3 of the men in the new USSA. Offenses like road rage and verbal assault carry heavy sentences, and the prisoners do most of the work of running the country. Bo realizes that the old saying "like father, like son" is true when he finds himself in a prison camp/pizza factory on the Canadian tundra for not controlling his temper. Prison life is dangerous, but not as dangerous as the illegal football team he's recruited to play on. Should he face the violence of the team, or trust his school AI project, Bork, to get him out? Will he be able to control the violence within him in the real world? ( )

Rash was a story about a boy who didn't really fit in at school. He has anger issues and is sent away to camp.

In the future, the government keeps everyone safe. You literally can't do anything dangerous. In the future, the government makes sure that no one says anything unkind. If you violate the law, you are sent away to prison labor camps, where you serve 18 hour days cutting french fries for Macdonald's or shredding cheese for Pizza Hut. When Bo is entenced to such a camp, he finds a curious way to survive. He begins to play that most dangerous of games: football. ( )

Fun and provocative, original--try it for a twist! ( )

This book is set in the 2080s when most things we enjoy are illegal. ( )

This novel is very entertaining. It is as much packed with action as with humor and satire.The protagonist, Bo Marsten, breaks one law after another in the United Safer States of America, towards the end of the 21st century. He is sent for 3 years to the Canadian tundra, at apizza factory where he has to survive the hard work and illegal football pracices or be polar bear food. As the events in his life unfold eveyrthing is being ridiculed and exposed, at times with humor, and at other times with downright harsh sarcasm - from the obsession with safety, to big business mergers and the government itself. Kids will love the action, and relate to Bo's high school experiences and the way he feels. They might even enjoy the intellectual game of trying to keep track of all the things the author is denouncing with irony and satire sprinkled throughout the book. ( )

Imagine a future where the penal systems supplies most of the manual and service labor of our country? Enter Hautman's book Rash where citizens young, old and especially male are imprisioned for such things as playing football to verbal abuse. Bo Marsten follows in his father's footsteps when he is sentenced to 3 years in a work camp for inciting a rash in classmates. He is drafted to an illegal football team while serving out his sentence at the McDonald's rehab facility. A good read with interesting ideas about our future.

"Back when Gramps was in high school, kids ran faster. Gramps claimed to have run 100 meters in 11 seconds, and the mile in 4:37. That was before the Child Safety Act of 2033. Now every high school runner has to wear a full set of protective gear--AtherSafe shoes with lateral ankle support and four layers of memory gel in the thick soles, knee pads, elbow pads, neck brace, tooth guard, wrist monitor, and an FDHHSS-cerified sports helmet. We raced on an Adzorbium track with its five centimeters of compacted gel-foam topped by a thick sheet of artificial latex. It's like running on a sponge."

In a not too distant future when the USA has become the USSA--the United Safer States of America, when obesity is a felony, and when 24% of the American population is imprisoned for acts of unsafe behavior, Bo is just a teenage boy struggling to obey the rules. After unintentionally spreading a psychosomatic rash through his school, Bo is sent to prison. For a young man raised in a highly supervised safer society, the anonymity of life in his prison camp is only slightly less tolerable than the intentional danger the warden is about to expose him to. His only way out might be an artificial intelligence homework assignment gone wrong. Pete Hautman challenges us to take a look at our current society of safety and wonder where it will take us in just a few short years.

Request this title from Howard County Library at http://tinyurl.com/2pr454 ( )

In future prison,

teens play illegal football

in MacDonald's plant. ( )

In a future America, safety is the most important thing, at the cost of personal freedoms of all kinds. Sixteen year old Bo is accused of causing a rash among his fellow students (among other offences) and is sent to a corporate run juvenile justice center. He finds that he can gain favor there by playing the long forbidden sport of football for the sadistic leader of the center. This book is reminiscent at times of M.T. Anderson's "Feed" and will appeal to young adults of either gender but does have particularly strong boy appeal. ( )

In a future society that has decided it would "rather be safe than free," sixteen-year-old Bo's anger control problems land him in a tundra jail where he survives with the help of his running skills and an artificial intelligence program named Bork. ( )

http://interactivereader.blogspot.com... ( )

In a future society that has decided it would "rather be safe than free," sixteen-year-old Bo's anger control problems land him in a tundra jail where he survives with the help of his running skills and an artificial intelligence program named Bork. ( )

Set in the future, where football is outlawed and only sports like track is played… with the right protective gear.
Bo’s behavior is getting out of control. What will happen to him when the school believes he is the cause for an epidemic?
Think… McDonalds and…. prison.
Fun read! Recommend to your teens. ( )

Bo Marsten dislikes Karlohs Mink, and loves Maddy. He lives in 2070 or something. The homeland safety department has morphed into something that requires all people to wear protective gear all all times, run on padded tracks. Bo is a runner. He creates an sentient artificial intelligence named Bork. Bo has too many offenses at school due to Karlohs and gets sent up, like his brother and father. This is how society gets its manual labor done. In prison Bo gets on the elite worker team that only has to work 8 hrs (not 16 hrs a day) and plays football. Bork breaks Bo and his father ouSounds better than it reads.

Imagine a future world where safety is more important than freedom. ( )

Bo lives in the United Safer States of America. To be safe, you must wear protective gear even when out for a walk. It is a crime to injure anyone else, even slightly, even accidently. But the federal government no longer runs the prisons... they have contracted that out to major corporations who use the inmates as slave labor. When a school rival accuses Bo of spreading a rash at school, his future is sealed - he is sent to a work camp in the tundra. ( )