BRATTLEBORO — A “high stakes, dystopian novel” for middle grade readers is a gripping story that explores injustice and societal expectations.
Author Anna Monders, who also works as accounts clerk at Brooks Memorial Library, said the main character Mikayla in her debut novel “Tested” reminds her to try to listen to her authentic self.
“Although the characters live in a futuristic world, I tried to make their emotional experiences ring true to life,” she said. “Mikayla … grapples with identity and belonging — something that we all experience in our own ways. She also has to confront the realities of injustice in her world, which she hasn’t had to think about much before.”
Simon & Schuster published the book on March 31. The story is “set in a world where everyone’s future is determined by their Genetic Report Card, a girl who’s always believed she was at the top of society finds out her score was based off someone else’s DNA in this high-stakes middle grade dystopian novel,” according to a description from the publisher.
Friends of Brooks Memorial Library bought several copies of “Tested” to provide as giveaways to kids and teens who attend a launch event at the library at 1 p.m. this Sunday, April 12. Monders will participate in a question and answer session and provide a demonstration about extracting DNA from a strawberry with salt, detergent and rubbing alcohol. She also will show a “DNA yoga pose” she invented.
Brooks Memorial Library Director Starr LaTronica, who’s thanked in the book’s acknowledgements, said the novel “captivated me quickly with its intelligent infusion of science, suspense and a strong sense of social justice.”
“Anna is an accomplished addition to the ranks of distinguished area authors,” LaTronica said in a news release.
In January, Monders was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Spring 2026 Writers to Watch. But her writing career came about slowly, she said, as she had been working at it for 14 years before securing two book deals on the same week for two separate projects.
“I think I had an inkling early on that I wanted to write,” she said. “I was a big reader when I was a kid.”
As a child, Monders would also practice storytelling at recess. One kid would start a story and another would have to finish it.
Journal entries from the age of 18 show her questioning if she should follow the math and science track instead of following her writing ambitions. She likens that experience of weighing inner and outer expectations to that of Mikayla, the main character of “Tested.”
“Her path is laid out for her in a similar way and then there is some reckoning,” she said.
After the Peace Corps and starting graduate school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Monders started having second thoughts. She received her master’s degree in planetary sciences but left before getting a PhD.
The experience helped inform the writing of “Tested.”
“I was seeing the real science research world,” Monders said, and she found it “very privileged.”
Monders, who was in rock research, said she talked with an expert to learn what it’s like in a genetics lab for the novel.
The book is for middle graders or 10 and older. That was a time in Monders’ life when reading was her refuge, she said, as her family moved around and she was always the new kid.
An environmental justice field trip from a program she participated in at University of California Berkeley inspired parts of the story dealing with industrial issues.
Monders started writing “Tested” in 2018 while waiting on feedback about her first novel, a fantasy story involving dragons. The idea for “Tested” was sparked by an article in MIT Technology Review explaining how forecasting genetic fate had just become more accurate.
“The genetic bioethics were totally in my head from that article,” Monders said. “What if we lived in a world that has that tracking across the board and what if your options in life are severely limited by what that genetic report tells you?”
Living in wildfire smoke affected Oregon at one point in time, Monders recounted feeling “an apocalyptic aura.” For the story, she decided to pair that sense of environmental catastrophe with limited resources in a new world order in which people are tracked and those with the best genetics are the elites or “leets” as others call them.
In the novel, a person who doesn’t live up to their genetic report card can lose privileges. On the cusp of exams, Mikayla finds out hers may have been falsified.
“She is dealing with uncovering what happened there,” Monders said, and what to do after realizing “how brutally wrong” society is operating.
Monders finished the first draft of “Tested” while living in Walpole, N.H., and working at the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich. She said she was getting back into writing the story while commuting on the Moover bus. Around that time, she also started a master of fine arts program at Simmons University for writing for children.
Her first novel and a nonfiction picture book on fossils, “So You Want to Be a Fossil?”, were garnering attention from agents.
“That was great motivation to actually write the manuscript, which I did over the course of a year and a half,” she said.
In 2022, Monders started working at Brooks Memorial Library. Co-workers have cheered her on along the road to getting published.
“I was in graduate school, I was fairly new to town and these were my people,” Monders said, “because I didn’t have time to do anything else.”
When Monders was offered a deal for “Tested,” she said, she got off the call and was shaking. It was her day off but she came to the library and told her coworkers.
“There was a wonderful shrieking going on,” Monders said.
Monders said “Tested” went through another year of editing and nearly doubled in length after input from editors. The fossil book also was given an offer at the same time and will be released on a smaller press in summer 2027.
At the time of the interview, Monders had three other submissions out with editors. She said she’s focused on fiction and picture books.
“I’m feeling like I’m ready to start working on a new project but right now there’s so much energy in getting this one launched,” she said of “Tested.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.reformer.com ’
