Monster

Myers, W. D., & Myers, C. (1999). Monster. New York, N.Y.: HarperCollins Publishers.

 

 

I absolutely LOVE this book. It is great for students who are struggling and have had a hard time being in and out of trouble regardless of race, sex, or even age. The young boy witnesses a crime in a drugstore but you never find out if he was ever actually involved in the ordeal. It has FLASHBACKS in the novel when the boy is sitting in jail awaiting trial, it is considered a MULTI-GENRE novel because it has the boy writing a screenplay in jail, writing in a journal in jail and then it has many different types of writings from the court reporters to the newspapers. The novel is very much young adult literature because it takes things that happens in high school all the time and really expands on how they could be dealt with before now. The boy mentions over and over that if he had just stayed away from "those people" that he wouldn't be in this situation. It also deals with person vs self because the young man stays conflicted with himself when he is writing in his journal. He talks about how this will affect his mom, affect his brothers, etc. The novel is an easy read and hard to put down once you are really involved with the reading but it is one of those books that leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions.

I could see this book being used in my classroom every year, regardless if I was teaching 8th grade or 12th grade. It is a great book to show children different types of writing and that all novels aren't just times new roman on 400 pages. I would ask the students to reflect a lot with this book so possibly asking them to keep a reading journal along with each chapter wouldn't be too much to expect. They could write about experiences where they connected, or they could write to Jamal and tell him what they would have done differently in those situations. I feel like it would be a great project that students could really connect with.