Give a Boy a Gun SSR Project #1
By Davis Ernest
Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser
I read the book Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser. The book was 208 pages long and I read it because it was a psychological thriller you could say. It was a very interesting book to me because it was about a few kids in high school that were labeled "outcasts" and it was about their journey through high school. It turned out to be a much darker book than I originally thought it would be. It was still a very good book about the lives of these bullied and messed up kids.
In a life of death situation, would it be a good last read?
I would say this is a good last read because it really shows you how bad some people can make each others lives. It makes you think about how bad your life could be if you were constantly picked on and bullied.
3 Things I loved and 2 things I did not like about Give a Boy a Gun.
Three things I loved about give a boy a gun was how the book was composed in all quotes because it was a different approach to telling a story and its different. I also liked how at the bottom of some pages there were facts and other information about guns and school shootings. The third thing I really liked about this book was how it was from multiple point of views so that you could get a grasp of what was really going on in the book.
Two things I did not like about Give a Boy a Gun was how long it took for the book to get into the action and the plot of the book. Another thing I did not like was how the book was how dark the subject matter was. It was a very dark topic but it was an important lesson that was taught.
Connection with the text.
This book was hard to connect to because it was so dark but one connection I could make with the book is I know how high school students can be and what people think is the answer is not always the answer. Killing isn't the answer to solve bullying and in this book the two boys made a big mistake by doing what they did.
Favorite Quote from the book.
My favorite quote from the book was on page 80 from F. Douglas Ellin. He said "No one is naive enough to believe that violent movies or television or video games can actually make anyone commit a violent act. The real question is if someone is inclined towards violence, do these forms of median help show him how to do it."
Would you recommend this book? Why?
I would recommend this book because I think it teaches a lesson about bullying. It shows how bullying can make people do crazy things and things they would not usually do. I think it teaches another important lesson on how to treat people because it shows you how they feel and how critical a little word can be to a persons self esteem.
What can we learn about humanity and the ways of people by reading your book?
This book is about a group of kids are outcasts at school and are constantly bullied. This tells me that people can be very cruel and treat people who are different like they are not even human. Society seems to have a strict regulation of what is normal and what is not normal and if you are not normal you are not okay. People who are different are treated different and I think that humanity needs to change that because peoples life's are being ruined by mistreatment and bullying. I think society needs to change the way they treat people and it really opens my eyes to how different people are treated. This book may be fiction but the story line is very similar to what happened at Columbine High school in Colorado April 20, 1999. This shows that even though the book is fiction it is realistic and could happen any day. The boys who were bullied in this book turned to the same methods of "solving their problems" as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did in the Columbine Massacre.