[.ca] Give a Boy a Gun (ISBN 0689848935)

From Amazon.com:
High school sophomores Gary Searle and Brendan Lawlor have had enough. Day in and day out, for more than two years, they have been harassed, beaten up, and cursed out by most of the jocks at Middleton High--especially by football player Sam Flach. Armed with guns they've stolen from a neighbor's collection, Gary and Brendan storm a school dance, booby trap all the doors with homemade bombs, and prepare to turn their high school caste system upside down with a violent show of force. When it's all over, Sam Flach is alive (but without any hope of a future football career), Gary has killed himself, and Brendan is in a coma, after being beaten almost to death by other students who managed to disarm him. Could this tragedy have been prevented? Who, if anyone, is to blame? Consisting of short, related statements from students, parents, school administrators, and even the troubled shooters themselves, Give a Boy a Gun attempts to give a voice to the countless sides of the school violence issue. Is this novel disturbing and at times difficult to read? Yes, of course it is. But it is also an articulate, well-rounded cross section of the many viewpoints on gun control, peer bullying, and the high school social order since the traumatic events that took place in Littleton, Colorado. While Strasser readily acknowledges that there are no easy solutions to the problem of school violence, this powerful book will be a useful tool for parents and teachers alike in exploring this issue and finding some ways of resolving the tragic escalation of teen violence. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

Just misses the mark:
When an author decides to write a story about a school shooting, the unwritten rule is that the author (unless a psychopath) is going to write a story that says school shootings are bad. We don't challenge this assumption because it's inherently moral. At the same time, any book that discusses school shootings shouldn't render the shooters as demonized villains. When kids start killing other kids the reasons are complex and deep. A simple, "This is why it happened", is nearly impossible, and to this end Strasser is very adept. But here's where Strasser messes up: In "Give a Boy a Gun" we have two guys who live hellish lives and try to take it out on their persecutors. By the end of the book they've trapped everyone they hate in a gymnasium with guns and bombs. And at this point the reader SHOULD have been given enough information to say a) Yes, these boys are victims and I can understand where they're coming from and b) Killing people is wrong anyway. Strasser drills home the first point perfectly. Strasser misses the second point by a mile. Gary and Brendan (perfect middle-America names) hate high school. It's just their bad luck to be living in a particularly sports crazy town. In Middletown, the high school jocks are granted particularly galling dispensations. Because they can bring their team and town incredible glory, they are treated like gods both in and out of school. This means that anyone who tangles with the glorious football players will inevitably end up on the losing side. The jocks take advantage of this system fully, and it only comes to a head when Brendan, an outsider who's transferred from another town, refuses to cow tow. The more the jocks try to teach him a lesson the worse it gets for Brendan and his reclusive and depressive friend Brendan. To them, high school is just a daily torture-fest and there is no hope in sight. Driven to believe that the only way out is to kill as many people they hate as possible as well as themselves, the two come up with a plan to take over a school dance and wreak revenge. Told after the events took place, this book is a series of interviews with the people involved, as well as copious footnotes. These footnotes provide useful facts about gun ownership in America, offering a sly anti-gun commentary to the book's events. In a way, my favorite parts of this book were the footnotes. I mean, where else are you going to learn that the parents of the teen shooters in Jonesboro and Springfield were taught how to use guns as children, following the advice of the NRA? So two thumbs way way up for the factual evidence presented here. It's just the fictional portions I had problems with. For one thing, I think Strasser made a mistake placing this story in a high school that is SO obsessed with sports. Most high schools where school shootings take place are normal high schools. THAT is why it's so important that all schools take anti-bullying precautions. Not just the ones that treat their jocks as some kind of royalty. Next, the book completely fails to express the horror of school shootings. Though the two boys do shoot people, nobody is ever killed. I'm not bloodthirsty and I don't like violence one bit, but if you have two seriously pissed off adolescent boys facing the people who've supposedly destroyed their lives, shouldn't at least one person get killed? But that's the thing. Though the boys are constantly shooting bullets into the ceiling, though they shoot two adults at point blank range, though they are prepared to kill everyone in that room, miraculously only one person has wounds that even suggest he might die. It takes guts to have your book's protagonists (sorry, but technically that's what they are) do horrible things. Strasser lacks those guts. And speaking of horrible things, why is it never made clear that shooting a bunch of people is bad? Of the football players, you see several characters embody every villainous instinct imaginable. They're never fleshed out or made three-dimensional. If even one of the jocks that made the boys miserable said something even halfway interesting or (for lack of a better word) un-evil I'd be appeased. But Strasser likes dealing in black and white and that's it. The result is, when the boys start threatening to kill people you know that killing is bad but you're having a heckuva hard time not identifying with their need for blood. Characters say that what happened is awful and the reader isn't told why. Where is the discussion about the redeeming characteristics found in even the cruelest of popular clique members? Where is the diatribe against the circle of violence and how it never ends? We're given fact upon fact about the evil of guns but we're never told WHY what they do is evil. This is a very serious flaw. I dunno. I mean, the book has a great series of appendixes in its back regarding school shootings that occurred while this book was being written, a partial list of school shootings, books to consult on the topic, magazine articles about it, web sites, etc. There's even a note saying how a portion of the money generated from this book will go towards organizations working to established tougher gun control laws. I really wish Strasser had done a non-fiction work on this subject rather than a fictional tale. If you want stirring stories about this kind of stuff look up Walter Dean Myers's, "Shooter" or Francine Prose's fabulous, "After". Though there was a lot of potential in this tale, it fell flat. I suggest you rent yourself a copy of "Bowling for Columbine" and enjoy that instead. Same great facts. Less icky taste in your mouth afterwards.

Good Book With a Good Message:
A 14 year old reader Opinion: --The book was good; it showed the way kids react when they grow up in a violent world. It also displays a good message to show the feelings of the kids who are not in the "in crowd" --It is also interesting hearing the perspective of the two boys from more than one character. That added an interesting layer to the books formayt. --One aspect that was confusing was the facts that were printed on the bottom of each page. Although they were interesting, they were also distracting to the plot. Recommendation: --This book is enjoyable and an easy read. This book should be suggested and/or mandatory to all middle school and junior high students. This book teaches a valuable lesson of respecting others whether they are like you or not. Overall a great book * * * * ( 4/5 star)

Give a Boy a Gun:
Recommendation I would only recommend this book to children 11 and up because of the graphic violence in the book, I would only recommend it to people that will take it seriously. After Brendan fired off many rounds from his gun, "It got quiet, and I heard those clicking sounds and realized Brendan was reloading."Also this book deals with teenage drinking and smoking. By tenth grade we were smashed every Friday night. In conclusion, if you are interested in Give a Boy a Gun, read this book.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too:
Every person in the world should read this book. That being said, I'll admit right off that I hate guns. Absolutely abhor them. I'm the mother who refuses to let her children play with toy guns, even water pistols. Why? Why, indeed. Why let your children shoot things at each other--whether it be water, rubber darts, BBs, or paint balls--if you don't want them to shoot bullets at each other? After all, that's what guns are for. To shoot bullets. Bullets that are designed to do one thing, and one thing only--kill. Or, if you prefer, injure, maim, dismember, or wound. So what is GIVE A BOY A GUN about? In a few words, human nature, the cruelty of children, and how those factors don't really mix well with guns. Oh sure, gun activists say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." And, if you get technical about it, they're right. But when someone gives you a guitar, what's it for? It produces musical sounds. Yes, it needs an actual human to aide it along, but a guitar does what it's made to do--make music. Just like a gun, with the aide of a human, does what it's supposed to do--kill. In Todd Strasser's GIVE A BOY A GUN, we learn about Brendan and Gary, two boys who live each day of school in their own personal hell. They're not athletic, so the jocks pick on them. They're not particularly brainy, so they don't fit in with the nerds. They don't come from extremely wealthy families, so they're not immediately deemed popular. In fact, Brendan and Gary are like 95% of every teenager you meet--normal kids living normal lives, trying their best to just get through the day. I remember all too well the horror and terror of high-school; not physical, at least in my case, but the sheer emotional bullying that I received from kids who deemed me not up to par. And the teachers who turn a blind eye, either because the tormentors were too valuable to the school as athletes, or too much trouble to deal with. But for Brendan and Gary, enough turns out to be enough. Really, how much torment can one person take? When teachers and administration and counselors turn the other way, when budget restraints prevent teachers from the ability to really get to know their students, when athleticism takes precedent over brain power, when will school bullying come to an end? Why, really, should it shock us as a nation when things like Columbine happen? Has it really been so long ago that you were in school that you can't remember what it was like to be the object of someone's daily put-downs, or the sneers and snide comments from the "popular" kids? Gary and Brendan, along with a few others like them, were "outcasts" in their school. When their fascination with revenge on those who've tormented them leads to guns, it really shouldn't surprise anyone. GIVE A BOY A GUN is interspersed with tragic facts--school shootings over the last several decades, quotes from newspaper articles, statistics from gun companies--that prove that teens and guns is a growing problem. But really, when you think about it, why should it shock us? We always see signs that proclaim a school a "drug-free zone", but when will we ever see one that proclaims it a "bully-free zone", or a "tolerance for everyone" zone? Think about why kids are so cruel, why they can't get noticed by those who could possibly help them, and why they can so easily get a gun to make their problems go away. Just as every person in the world (adult and teen) should watch the movie REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, everyone in the world needs to read Todd Strasser's utterly thought-provoking GIVE A BOY A GUN. And then we'll talk about how "guns don't kill people." Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"

A Book We Can All Relate:
A few weeks ago, I saw the play (mostly because one of my friends was a lead) and was deeply moved by the acting and the story. I decided to read the book. I read it and was suprised. I was suprised because Todd Strasser was able to tell the story like it was. In a lot of school-shooting related stories, the writer wouldn't really get the shooters side of the story, but that "the shooters are monsters and killed innocent people". Well, Mr. Strasser was able to tell Gary and Brendan's (the shooters) side of the story and how they couldn't take the bullying of the peers that were praised because they had money, or was an athlete. How the teachers turned a blind eye to this torture and so the group of "outcasts" which were Brendan Lawlor, Gary Searle, Ryan Clancy and Allison Findley, were left with no defense. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words....words hurt forever." -Ryan Clancy So, they became friends and suffered 9 and 10 grade until Brendan and Gary decided to take matters into their own hands, giving the motion that "If you push us, we will push back". I strongly recommend any teen to read this before they think of bullying anyone or thinking that they're alone because they're being bullied. Maybe this book can decrease bullying and school shooting in the US. Also, for adults, to learn to listen to kids so they don't hurt anyone. Maybe a lot of shootings would have never happened if an adult just listened to the kids instead of saying that they're "too busy" to listen. Is it too much trouble to listen for 5 minutes? Maybe that might save a few lives. Maybe this book will help save a few lives. Or give a kid who has nothing to live for hope that there might be a better tomorrow.