Black and White - Hardcover

Volponi, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670060062 ISBN 13: 9780670060061

Publisher: Viking Juvenile, 2005

Synopsis

Marcus and Eddie are best friends. They're also stars on the basketball court, where they're known as Black and White. Race has never been an issue: Marcus is black, Eddie is white, but it doesn't matter. Until they start to pull stickups for extra pocket cash and the gun they're using goes off. Now Marcus is going to jail and Eddie is going to college, even though Eddie is the one who fired the gun.

Told in their two voices, Black and White is the gripping story of two good boys who make a bad mistake. It's also a heart-breaking look at the realities of the urban criminal justice system. Written with passion and uncanny authenticity, this is Paul Volponi's debut young adult novel.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Volponi is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novel Black & White. From 1992 to 1998, he taught adolescents on Rikers Island in New York City to read and write. Mr. Volponi worked at a day treatment center like Daytop teaching students and helping them prepare for the GED. Mr. Volponi lives in New York City.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Gr. 9-12. "Kids who are different colors don't get to be all that tight in my neighborhood. But we get past all that racial crap," says Marcus, an African American senior whose best friend, Eddie, is white. Together, the boys are known at school as Black and White. Both are basketball stars entertaining scholarship offers from local New York City colleges, but they risk everything for more spending money. Considering fast-food jobs too demeaning, they turn to armed stickups, and during their third robbery, they shoot and wound their victim. In alternating chapters, Marcus and Eddie recount the terrifying days after the event as they wait for the police to find and arrest them. The disparate treatment each receives highlights their racial divide, which is occasionally echoed on the streets in harsh language full of hate: a man on the subway tells a white girl that "niggers are going to fuck you, too." Using authentic voices that will draw in both strong and reluctant readers, Volponi writes a taut novel that avoids didacticism and deftly balances drama and passion on the basketball court with each boy's private terror and anguish. Teens will want to discuss the story's layered moral ambiguities, heartbreaking choices, and, as Marcus says, "the line that separates black and white." Gillian Engberg
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Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Juvenile
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670060062
• ISBN 13: 9780670060061
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192