Shooter - Softcover

Myers, Walter Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0064472906 ISBN 13: 9780064472906

Publisher: Amistad Books for Young Readers, 2005

Synopsis

The groundbreaking and widely praised novel about a school shooting, from the acclaimed author of Monster. Multiple narratives, a personal journal, and newspaper and police reports add perspective and pull readers into the story.

"Questions of guilt and innocence drive the plot and stay with the reader," said Hazel Rochman in a starred Booklist review. "Highly readable."

"A haunting story that uncovers the pain of several high school students," according to Teenreads.com. "It explores the tragedies of school violence and how the result of bullying can go to the most dramatic extreme. Myers has a gift for expressing the voices of his characters. Shooter is not a light read, but it will leave you reeling."

About this title

Review

Cameron, Carla, and Len were fascinated (for different reasons) with guns and target shooting at the Patriots' club range until the day Len brought his Kalashnikov rifle, his AR-18, and his Ruger pistol to school, and shot and killed football jock Brad Williams, and then himself. Here is yet another school shooting story that begins with bullying and ends with disaster--a type that is becoming almost a sub-genre of YA fiction. Yet Walter Dean Myers, winner of many awards for his young adult novels, brings freshness and new anguish to this familiar tale (and growing social problem) of unstable victim tormented by bullies to homicidal rage. Following the example of his own masterwork Monster, Myers uses different perspectives in the aftermath of the "incident" to reveal the characters and to tell the story: interviews with Cameron and Carla by The Harrison County School Safety Committee, newspaper reports, a police report, Len's handwritten "die-ary" of his deranged thoughts, and finally, a grim medical examiner's report. The contrasts and contradictions in these various perspectives challenge readers to produce their own versions of why Cameron and Carla became Len's followers and what could have prevented this tragedy and others like it in real life. (ages 12 and up) --Patty Campbell

From the Back Cover

Cameron: "Deep inside, you know that whoever gets up in your face gets there because he knows you′re nothing, and he knows that you know it too."

Carla: "What I′m trying to do is to get by -- not even get over, just get by."

Leonard: "I have bought a gaw-juss weapon. It lies beneath my bed like a secret lover, quiet, powerful, waiting to work my magic."

Statement of Fact: 17-year-old white male found dead in the aftermath of a shooting incident at Madison High School in Harrison County.

Conclusion: Death by self-inflicted wound.

Ages 12+

About this edition

• Publisher: Amistad Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0064472906
• ISBN 13: 9780064472906
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 223