Skin Deep (Point) - Softcover

Ruby, Lois

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0590477005 ISBN 13: 9780590477000

Publisher: Point, 1996

Synopsis

Laurel is shocked by the sudden transformation of her best friend and boyfriend, Dan, a withdrawn young man who secretly joins a band of neo-Nazi skinheads and becomes involved in their violent racial demonstrations. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Lois Ruby is the author of 18 books for middle graders and teens, including Steal Away Home, Miriam’s Well, The Secret of Laurel Oaks, Rebel Spirits, Skin Deep, and The Doll Graveyard. Her fiction runs the gamut from contemporary to historical and from realistic to paranormal. An ex-librarian, Ruby now writes full-time, in addition to speaking to bookish groups, presenting at writing workshops, and touting literacy and the joys of nourishing, thought-provoking reading in schools across the country. Ruby and her husband live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8 Up?The challenge of growing up in a fatherless, female-dominated home are not enough to make Dan a skinhead. He can even survive the abrupt move to a cramped apartment in Boulder and to spending his senior year in a strange school, so that his two older sisters can attend the University of Colorado. But, when multiethnic quotas bar him from both making the swim team and from landing a job, Dan's tolerance reaches its limit. Angry and frustrated, he begins to succumb to the seductive, machismo posturing of the local skinheads. He cooperates with them and adopts their dress code, while never truly buying into their racist creed. Not realizing that he has become their pawn, he soon finds himself at the center of a controversy for wearing a swastika emblazoned shirt to school. Dan's eldest sister, an articulate and idealistic law student, steps in to voice her repulsion at the group's philosophy and violent methods, while passionately defending their right to free speech. This dramatic shift of focus introduces some extremely important issues but drops them in midair. Then in a rapid-fire series of events, including the kidnapping of Dan's girlfriend's adopted, Vietnamese brother and the reappearance of Dan's father, the young man comes to see the error of his ways. Ruby has researched her target group well, but the complexities of the skinhead movement as a whole are included in a haphazard way. In addition, this already complicated plot is embellished with some frivolous subplotting, while more significant and interesting characters (most notably a female skin and a wise old tatoo artist) are not fully developed. This novel simply tries to do too much. The scenes with action and suspense are well done and will hold the attention of many teens. Buy this one, but don't forget Jay Bennett's far simpler Skinhead (Watts, 1991).?Margaret Cole, Oceanside Library, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Point
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0590477005
• ISBN 13: 9780590477000
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280