Hooked on YA books 2015 discussion

Monster is about a 16 years old boy, Steve, who is on trial for felony murder. He has been involved in an unarmed robbery in a drugstore, in which the owner has been accidentally killed by his own gun.
During the trial, Steve is constantly exposed to the violence and sexual abuse which is happening in the jail. His important social relationships are limited to his attorney, Ms. O'Brien, and his family who come to visit him in jail now and then. While he is struggling with his identity and trying to figure out wether he is a murderer of an innocent teenager, neither O'Brien nor his father seem to believe in him. Obviously, this is not a helpful situation for him to come to terms with himself. As an effort to escape this tension, he starts writing in a screen play about what he is going through in his journal, Through these journal entries and the screen play, he creates his most important relationship: his relationship with himself. Behind the scene of the screen play, he is trying to talk to himself, reflect on what is happening, and ultimately, make sense of the unpredictable situation from which he cannot escape.

In reading this, I also found insight into his relationships with his brother and within his peer group. He wanted to be someone his brother could look up to, and, in choosing to include the scene with the discussion of what superhero they wants to be. Steve says he wants to be Superman, and Jerry says that he should be Batman instead so Jerry can be his Robin. By including this, Steve is showing his "viewers" that he wants to be his little brother's superhero, but has clearly failed.
His relationship with his friends and his acquaintances including James King are very complicated. He feels pressure to act tough when he's around King, indicating tension in the peer world to act a certain way. This is an interesting contrast to his relationship with his brother. In both cases, he wants to seem tough, bigger than he is, and more deserving of their respect. It's the tension in his relationship with King that leads to his eventual capitulation to at least show up at the drugstore, and it's the tension in his relationship with his younger brother that contributes to his guilt and sadness at putting his family through this ordeal.
I thought that the screenplay format in itself created an interesting tension between Steve and the reader. How can we trust him as a narrator when there is no final answer about whether he really did it or not? Is he lying to the readers, even if only by omission?

Post about the intercultural consciousness of characters in a choice YA novel.

I feel that Steve's experience with being in jail and realizing that there is the possibility of him being incarcerated has changed his views on what really matters in life. He thinks of his family, his studies and sees how wanting to be part of the "cool" kids was not worth it. By experiencing the life that a prison has to offer, surrounded by inmates that want to physically hurt one another all the time, living with fear day in and day out is a life that Steve does not want.
"Think about all the tomorrows of your life" (205) he would say to his little brother.

I believe that Steve grew as a person by the end and dealing with the prison culture he soon discovered how badly he wanted his life back with his family and friends. It's an experience that will forever stay with him and as we saw towards the end of the book he struggles to figure out what type of person he is.

"What did I do? What did I do? Anybody can walk into a drugstore and look around is that what I'm on trial for? I didn't do nothing! I didn't do nothing! But everybody is just messed up with the pain. I didn't fight with Mr. Nesbitt. I didn't take any money from him. Seeing my dad cry like that was just so terrible. What was going on between us, me being his son and him being my dad, is pushed down and something else is moving up in its place. It's like a man looking down to see his son and seeing a monster instead. Miss O'Brien said things were going bad for us beause she was afraid that the jury wouldn't see a difference between me and all the bad guys taking the stand. I think my dad thinks the same thing." (pp 115-116).

Juxtaposed with this quote to show intertextuality, intersubjectivity, and multiple social worlds to students:

"It was the last day of school, and I was walking with my dad, preparing to leave. Suddenly, he paused, looked at me intently and said, 'Son, you're a black male, and that's two strikes against you.' To the general public, anything that I did would be perceived as malicious and deserving of severe punishment and I had to govern myself accordingly. I was seven years old."

- 26-year-old Robert Stephens from Kansas City, Missouri.

I think Monster affords so many possibilities to connect, interpret and make comprehensible for our students what we are seeing occurring in our country right now in terms of race relations. It could help learners talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and what they may be seeing in the news, etc. I really think this novel could be a very powerful and relevant teaching tool and very relevant - it's even more powerful to think that this book was written in 1999.

The inner monologues explored in Monster were extremely poignant to the construction of identity for the main character Steve. He goes back and forth contemplating whether or not he truly is a "Monster." In the end, it's really not clear what he determines. The thoughts Steve has, although more extreme than maybe the average person, are common. Everyone questions their morality at some point in their lives so this book is relatable to every reader.