Shooterby Walter Dean Myers
Publishers Weekly
:
In this chilling cautionary tale, Myers revisits the themes of his Monster and Scorpions in a slightly more detached structure, but the outcome is every bit as moving. The novel opens with what serves as a cover sheet to a "Threat Analysis Report," which, in its mission statement, makes mention of "the tragic events of last April." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
| distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.: |
School Library Journal
:
Gr 8 Up-Six months after a deadly shooting at a suburban high school, educators and psychological and criminal experts compile their interviews and analyses to assess any ongoing threat in the school environment. Through these documents, Myers skillfully tells the story of the shooting, its precipitating causes, and the aftermath for the shooter's closest friends. As in Robert Cormier's The Rag and Bone Shop (Delacorte, 2001), readers are made aware of the realistic and insidious biases different interrogators bring to their investigations. Seventeen-year-old Cameron Porter, the deceased shooter's closest friend, expresses himself one way when being debriefed by a psychologist and necessarily comes across differently when questioned by an FBI agent. Readers also are shown how such diverse types of inquiry are committed to paper with subtle but telling differences, as one interviewer asks that the transcriber retain Porter's pauses while the other directs the transcriber specifically to omit them. Other characters include the boys' one female friend, and, ultimately, Len, the shooter himself, through the clearly disturbed pages of his diary in the months leading up to the "incident." Myers uses no narrative frame other than the documents themselves and excels in providing clear and distinct voices through these interviews, notes, and reports; only the newspaper items lack a genuine ring. In addition to young adults who will find this story intensely readable as well as intense, adults working with teens should read and discuss the questions and implications that the tale reveals.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
| distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.: |
BookList
: From BookList, February 15, 2004, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. : *Starred Review* : Gr. 7-12. Like Myers' Printz Award book, Monster (1999), this story is told from multiple viewpoints, and questions of guilt and innocence drive the plot and stay with the reader. This time there's a shooting in a high school. Len, a senior, commits suicide after he shoots a star football player and injures several others in the schoolyard. The actual facts of that carnage emerge slowly, as Len's best friend, Cameron, is interviewed at length by a therapist, a sheriff, and a threat-prevention specialist. Adding more perspective are newspaper and police reports, and Len's personal journal, which reveals his fury and hurt about his macho father and school bullies. The multiple narratives move the story far beyond case history, the chatty interview format is highly readable, and Cameron's voice is pitch perfect. One of the few black students in the school, he's an outsider like Len, but he's quiet about it, “an ordinary guy.” He doesn't want to stand out; he does nothing about the racism implicit in an image of Martin Luther King on a shooting-range practice target, and he's ashamed. It's this bystander role readers will want to talk about, as well as who is to blame. Why does Cameron just go along with things? What about the parents, the principal, the counselors who knew about the bullying and tell Len to “grow up”?
HazelRochman. : | distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.: |
|
