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179th out of 213 books
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28 voters
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Shades of Simon Gray
Simon Gray is the ideal teenager — smart, reliable, hardworking, trustworthy. Or is he? After Simon crashes his car into The Liberty Tree, another portrait starts to emerge. Soon an investigation has begun into computer hacking at Simon’s high school, for it seems tests are being printed out before they are given. Could Simon be involved?
Simon, meanwhile, is in a coma — bu...more
Simon, meanwhile, is in a coma — bu...more
Mass Market Paperback, 272 pages
Published
January 14th 2003
by Laurel Leaf
(first published 2001)
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I really enjoyed this book and think advanced middle school or early high school students would like it too. It deals with high stakes cheating in a high school as well as issues of friendship and guilt that surround the group of students involved in "the project" of cheating continuously. The characters are well developed gradually throughout the book through an omnicient third person narrator. While I get the symbolism of relating Simon to the young man who was wrongfully hanged beca...more
Julia
rated it
Recommends it for:
teenagers and adults
Recommended to Julia by:
8th grade Language Arts teacher (Mrs. Lockwood)
Shades of Simon Gray by Joyce McDonald is a fantastic young adult read. I would recommend this book to ages 14 and up. My favorite thing about this novel is the amazing description. If you are interested in reading this book you should be aware that it is a difficult read, and it also switches from different points of view (who is actually telling the story). To read a full summary of Shades of Simon Gray follow this link:
http://www.amazon.com/Shades-Simon-Gray-...
http://www.amazon.com/Shades-Simon-Gray-...
Stark and cataclysmic feeling, the story hovers the line between human and fantasy. The boy parents love to love and his fellow students would love to hate "accidentally" runs into a tree and then you get to see all the lives he has thrown into relief and changed while he himself does nothing in the land of the living, but unearths the secret behind a local murder legend while in the land of the dead. I don't quite know what to make of it.
This is an interesting book about justice, guilt, and the reasons people do things. It mixes two stories. The first is a group of modern-day teens involved in a cheating ring who use Simon Gray to achieved their purposes. The second is a hanging from the 1700's. As the story progresses, both mysteries are revealed, and the towns people experience Biblical style plagues as punishment for past misdeeds.
It was alright. Not my kind of genre, but I got it as a christmas gift. I found the main characters experiences in his "coma state" or dreams or whatever less interessting than the evens happening without him in it.
Filled with Biblical allusions and morally compromising situations, Shades of Simon Gray is a mystery I plan to keep on the shelves for a long time.
This guy runs into a tree and is in a coma, and his high school friends are in a lot of trouble for what they did, if they are going to get caught.
This book was interesting but could be hard to keep up with the story. You had to pay attention and put the peices together.
There was nothing interesting about this book. Nothing about it kept me going and wanted me to finish reading.
Everybody i talk to about said it was horrible, but i enjoyed it. Everybody has thier own opinion i guess.
This book was different from all of the rest. I didn't think that it would be as good as it was at all.
I really enjoyed this book and it's got an interesting plot. Also has great cover art.
Ooh!!! It was REALLY good! It kept reading...very spooky..
It was okay. There were bits that really annoyed me -- like the kid who was a pot smoker but kept calling it marijuana. Predictable story, sort of a After-school Special feel.
alright book
This is a great book about ethics: cheating, drugs, stealing, deceit. It's interesting to watch the characters rationalize the bad things they do.
I read this book in school and was really not liking it. There are fourteen chapters and I was bored for about nine of them. Finally around chapter ten it started getting better an redeemed the book a little bit. By chapter thirteen I was enjoying it but the ending was disappointing because there were a lot of loose ends. Overall an ok book but not one I would chose to read by myself.
this book is about a guy named Simon who hacks into the school's computer system and helps his firends get into the schools they want to until he gets into a coma and the school finds out that someone is hacking into the system and Simon's friends are hoping he deleted all the evidence
I really enjoyed reading this interesting book.It's about choices good and bad and the prices we're willing to pay to get what we want.
Everyone seemed to like this book but I didn't like the way the author expressed herself.
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Born in San Francisco, CA, and raised in Chatham, NJ, Joyce McDonald received her BA and MA from the University of Iowa, and went on to complete her Ph.D. at Drew University. She is the author of several books for children and young adults, among them the award winning Swallowing Stones, and the Edgar Award Nominated Shades of Simon Gray. She has taught at East Stroudsburg University in PA, Drew U...more
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