by Sharon Myrick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 14, 2018
A well-written, if occasionally ponderous, exploration of modern high school life.
Myrick’s debut novel follows several teenagers at two Virginia high schools as they find their paths.
The book opens at Hilltop Academy, a private school populated by the children of faculty at two nearby colleges. Chelsea silently critiques school policies (“So what’s inside my backpack is important, but not what’s inside me?”) and her clique-y classmates. She also connects with recent California transplant Sean, who, like her, is struggling to find his place. Sean organizes a nature walk in response to the suicide of a bullied student. Then he persuades his parents to let him transfer to the less-exclusive Stone Creek High School, where he joins Chelsea’s friends Cora, a politically active organizer exploring her biracial heritage; Jake, who wants to follow his father into agriculture despite the challenges faced by small farmers; and the gregarious Daniel, whose nickname is “Mr. Mayor.” Stone Creek’s unconventional principal, Mr. Shepherd, answers to the name “Chief” and encourages student autonomy. The book’s narration shifts among the various students as they deal with personal and academic challenges and make their ways toward graduation. Myrick is a thoughtful writer who gets deep into her characters’ psyches. That said, the teenagers’ self-centered, pseudo-intellectual voices are so accurately portrayed as to be grating at times (as when Sean describes Hilltop Academy to Daniel’s mother: “we were the fish, kept apart from the real world of natural waters, glubbing around in circles, until we almost believed it was normal”). However, the author seems determined to give full weight to her young characters’ arguments, no matter how petty they might appear to adults. This is demonstrated by how she uses the character of Chief, who repeatedly learns from the kids under his charge.
A well-written, if occasionally ponderous, exploration of modern high school life.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-423-3
Page Count: 303
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Walter Dean Myers ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 1999
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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by Walter Dean Myers ; illustrated by Floyd Cooper
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by Walter Dean Myers ; adapted by Guy A. Sims ; illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile
by Stephen Chbosky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 1999
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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