Monster

July 8, 2019 7:06 AM - by Walter Dean Myers

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER. FADE IN: INTERIOR COURT. A guard sits at a desk behind Steve. Kathy O'Brien, Steve's lawyer, is all business as she talks to Steve. O'BRIEN: Let me make sure you understand what's going on. Both you and this king character are on trial for felony murder....

This is the second book (belatedly posted, sorry!!) in the Nostalgic YA Book Club!

posted by ChuraChura (1 comment total)

This is a book I read and re-read a lot when I was a kid growing up in a majority white, majority affluent, smallish town/city in New Hampshire. Steve's experience in jail was, in some ways, as unfamiliar to me as Catherine Called Birdy's experience in medieval England. Upon my most recent re-read, I was struck by how few books I read as a kid featured a young black man and whether that was my own personal bias, or just lack of options.

I still haven't decided if Steve acted as a lookout or not.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:09 AM on July 8, 2019