Product Description

For as long as they can remember, Brendan and Gary have been mercilessly teased and harassed by the jocks who rule Middletown High. But not anymore. Stealing a small arsenal of guns from a neighbor, they take their classmates hostage at a school dance. In the panic of this desperate situation, it soon becomes clear that only one thing matters to Brendan and Gary: revenge.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152168 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-01
• Released on: 2002-04-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .52" h x 4.56" w x 6.78" l, .23 pounds
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 208 pages

From Amazon.com
High school sophomores Gary Searle and Brendan Lawlor have had enough. Day in and day out, for more than two years, they have been harassed, beaten up, and cursed out by most of the jocks at Middleton High--especially by football player Sam Flach. Armed with guns they've stolen from a neighbor's collection, Gary and Brendan storm a school dance, booby trap all the doors with homemade bombs, and prepare to turn their high school caste system upside down with a violent show of force. When it's all over, Sam Flach is alive (but without any hope of a future football career), Gary has killed himself, and Brendan is in a coma, after being beaten almost to death by other students who managed to disarm him. Could this tragedy have been prevented? Who, if anyone, is to blame?

Consisting of short, related statements from students, parents, school administrators, and even the troubled shooters themselves, Give a Boy a Gun attempts to give a voice to the countless sides of the school violence issue. Is this novel disturbing and at times difficult to read? Yes, of course it is. But it is also an articulate, well-rounded cross section of the many viewpoints on gun control, peer bullying, and the high school social order since the traumatic events that took place in Littleton, Colorado. While Strasser readily acknowledges that there are no easy solutions to the problem of school violence, this powerful book will be a useful tool for parents and teachers alike in exploring this issue and finding some ways of resolving the tragic escalation of teen violence. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

From Publishers Weekly
The author explores the psyche of adolescents who use handguns to violent ends, as two 10th-graders hold their classmates hostage. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 8&Up--Todd Strasser's documentary-styled novel (S&S, 2000) about the confluence of easy access to guns, social tolerance of middle school bullying, the celebrity status of high school athletes, and twists in individual teenage psyches gave high school and adult readers much food for informed consideration of recent highly publicized incidents of school violence. Although this full-cast audiobook claims to be unabridged, one of the essential trappings of the printed text has been stripped here; the nonfiction footnotes that ran throughout the pages of the book are gone, making the audiobook version a wholly fictional, skeletal rendering of Strasser's original blending of supporting fact with realistic fiction. The personal histories and viewpoints of two high school boys who run amok with firearms at a school dance, their parents, childhood and teenage friends and enemies, teachers who wanted to help them and others who scorned them as openly as did the socially conforming football team members, are offered in snippets of suicide notes, reminiscences, and online transcripts. Not many of the readers chosen to speak these many parts fulfill their age roles credibly, which distances listeners from full involvement. This recorded version is no substitute or acceptable alternative for the print; it's a simplified and relentless march to an inevitable conclusion, with no way stations for the imagination.

Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.