Monster
by Walter Dean Myers
“Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.” - Walter Dean Myers, Monster
Loss of Humanity
A robbery occurs in a drugstore where the owner is killed by a discharge of a gun when he was defending himself and the store. A Clerk noticed the owner on the floor and missing cigarettes. Our main character Steven Harmon is thought to have served as a look out for the robbers. Steven must face the challenges in the court room and make the jury think of him as a human being and not a monster. The book is written like a movie script written by the main character which shares the same name.
Interview with Walter Dean Myers
Walter Dean Myers talks about his past with books.
Reviews
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action. Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence. The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made- Kirkus reviews
SPECTACULAR READ
This book has an amazing story and everyone would enjoy it. Not many people as of now have read this book, but everyone who has loved it and you should too.
http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Walter-Dean-Myers/dp/0064407314