Read for school in May 1987, a year before 1984, which is the right order even if it was an accident of the curriculum.
The pigs take over, the rules on the barn wall get amended overnight, and the sheep drown out any question with slogans. The genius of it is the length. A hundred pages, no subplots, nothing to hide behind.
What school tends to flatten is that this is a specific argument about a specific revolution, not a general fable about power.
