Among the Hidden

Among the Hidden is a middle grade novel by the American writer Margaret Peterson Haddix, published in 1998 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. It is the first book of the Shadow Children series, which runs to seven novels.

The book is set in a future United States where a shortage of food has led the government to drastic measures against population growth and a family may legally have only two children. Luke is a third child, and he has been kept hidden since birth, first indoors whenever anyone came near the farm and then, once part of the land is sold and built on, permanently upstairs. From his window he studies the families who have moved in, works out that another hidden child lives in the house beside his, and begins passing messages through a vent. Jen has contact with a wider network of children like them and a plan that asks Luke to decide how much of his own safety he is prepared to give up.

Haddix writes in the third person and stays close to Luke's view of a world he knows mostly from what other people tell him. The series continues with Among the Impostors, and the later books follow the hidden children as they try to change the rule that made them illegal.