Young Adult Book Reading Challenges discussion

What do you think about the stereotyping in this book? Does it teach any lessons? What do you think of the small town?

It infuriated me - it's used as a reason to bully and persecute someone just because she's related to an unpopular person who happens to have strange habits. At least, as far as the townspeople are concerned, Macon just has strange habits - they don't know what he really is.

I was angry about the adult-supervised bullying directed at Lena. My anger was only partly mitigated at the end when I found out the truth about Mrs. Lincoln.

People in small towns can be narrow minded but I hope that they're not so mean as to try to gang up on a girl simply because they don't like her uncle. I know that often happened in the past when single, eccentric, women healers were labelled as witches and persecuted for their knowledge. I'm afraid that it's all too easy for like-minded people to band together against someone they perceive to be the 'other'. I hope that books like this, that exaggerate the threat of 'witch hunts', encourage people to think for themselves before climbing on the hate bandwagon with their parents.

To me it was a very accurate portrayal of small town prejudices. It was infuriating to be sure but it was accurate.

I went to high school in a small town.. well not a tiny town but a town that's population was about 12000. It was about 8 miles from the city which was about 200,000. Both have grown now. I really didn't ever experience one person being excluded from everything. But I do know that in small towns the smallest things can make you popular. Sports, growing up in the town. There must've been more kids who weren't popular. This book seemed to just focus on the 5 popular kids and then Ethan and Lena. I wish we had heard about some of the other kids in town.

I wasn't really infuriated by the stereotyping because today's crazy celeb gossip and all that is just insane. I think that it's really awesome that Stohl and Garcia gave the characters a backstory and reason to be stereotypical, even if it's not exactly a good reason.