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Monster

Walter Dean Myers

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Aug 23, 2010 Patrice Sartor rated it really liked it

Shelves: realistic-fiction, young-adult, ethical-dilemma, drugs-alcohol-and-or-crime

GENRE: Fiction: Realistic fiction, mild urban fiction.

SUBJECT/THEMES: Youth in prison, screenplay writing, courtroom drama, self-perception.

SUMMARY: Steve Harmon is only sixteen, but he has learned when it’s the best time to cry in prison. He has been taken into custody while he awaits his trial for his alleged involvement in a drugstore robbery that ended in the storekeeper’s death. Steve narrates his story, though he accomplishes this through journal entries and presenting what is happening to GENRE: Fiction: Realistic fiction, mild urban fiction.

SUBJECT/THEMES: Youth in prison, screenplay writing, courtroom drama, self-perception.

SUMMARY: Steve Harmon is only sixteen, but he has learned when it’s the best time to cry in prison. He has been taken into custody while he awaits his trial for his alleged involvement in a drugstore robbery that ended in the storekeeper’s death. Steve narrates his story, though he accomplishes this through journal entries and presenting what is happening to him with a screenplay. Steve is a member of the film workshop group at his high school, and had aspirations to create movies one day, so it felt only natural to him to make his trial into a movie. The district attorney called him a ‘monster’, and that is what he called his script.

EVALUATION: Steve’s use of a screenplay to convey what he is going through allows him to detach himself from the experience. He is living it, certainly, but he is also chronicling it. During Steve’s more candid journal entries, the reader sees how scared he really is. I thought this was a moving and profound way to write Monster, and the dichotomy really pulled me in. I wanted Steve to be found innocent, I wanted him to be better than the people he associated with, and I wanted him to succeed in life. Myers does an incredible job with this novel, and I find it worthy of the praise it has received.

WHY I WOULD INCLUDE IT: While this is fiction, it could easily be an auto-biography. I suspect that every day a young African-American male goes through a similar experience of wondering if his whole life will soon be over, doomed to spend it in a prison cell. Even though this is not true urban fiction, those same types of readers may enjoy it, and the screenplay/journalistic style will draw in others. The story is well told and is worthy of being read by any and every teen reader. Plus, it has won a slew of well-deserved awards.

The back of my copy had a book discussion guide, and I found one online as well (may need to be signed into NoveList to access it). This would work in a school library setting, a teen book club program at a library, or just provide extra questions for the teen to discuss the book with friends and/or family. Retrieved April 2, 2009, from http://web.ebscohost.com/novelist/det...

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• The Giver, by Lois Lowry.
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