Monster by Walter Dean Myers

(image via goodreads.com)

Citation

Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. Print.

Awards

•      1999 nominee, National Book Award for Young People's Literature
•          2000 Michael L. Printz Award
•          2000 Coretta Scott King Honor (Author)
•          ALA Best Book for Young Adults
•          ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
•          Kentucky Bluegrass Award

Annotation

Sixteen year old Steve Harmon sits on trial as an accomplice to murder. Monster follows his story, narrated in a mix of diary entries and screenplays from his perspective.

Booktalk

Is Steve Harmon a monster? The State of New York thinks so. Steve sits on trial for his role in a neighborhood robbery gone bad. At the age of sixteen, he is faced with at least twenty years in prison, if not the death penalty, for acting as the lookout in a drugstore holdup that ended in the owner’s murder. As he thinks about the trial and his future, the only way Steve can make things clear for himself is to imagine how his life would look as a movie. Combined with his journal entries written during his nights in jail, Monster shows the internal struggle of a young man in dire circumstances. Steve is forced to confront the truth of who he really is. Will the jury agree with the prosecution that Steve is a Monster?