Second blog post of today involves a fictional book, i really dont know the details off the top of my head so I am going to find a description of it online.
It's called Endgame
I read this book my freshman year, and it was the first book I became really engrossed in. Before this point i hatted reading because I never found a book that really caught my attention. Here is a description followed by an excerpt.
Endgame is for teens 14 and up. It was inspired by the terrible shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999 in which 23 people were wounded and 13 people were killed (15 if you count the two shooters, who committed suicide). Reporters, law enforcement personnel, educators, and just about everyone who was stunned by the tragedy and by similar events both before and after it struggled to understand what makes some kids turn guns on their fellow students and on teachers. Like many people, I wished there were something I could do to add to the understanding of what had happened, especially because I believed understanding it and similar events might help prevent school shootings from happening again.
As time went on, one causal factor stood out to me in news reports and analyses, especially because although it was mentioned over and over again, it was never (until quite recently) emphasized. That factor is bullying. Just about all the shooters I read about had been the victims of severe, repeated bullying. I'd been bullied myself as a child, and know a little about how it feels
—and I decided to write a novel focused on bullying and the tragic consequences it can have on both bullier and bullied.
Endgame is the result. It's been named a
2006 Best Book by School Library Journal, and a
2007 New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. (
Harcourt; ISBN 13: 978-0-15-205416-8; ISBN 10: 0-15-205416-2)
"Gonna be better, gonna be better here," Gray Wilton thinks when he and his family move and he starts high school in a new town and a new state.
But in less than a year, he finds himself in a juvenile detention center...
Hexagons.
Six sides.
The wire mesh embedded in the window glass formed little six-sided figures.
Yeah, hexagons.
Gray stared at them.
But so what? It didn't matter.
Nothing much mattered anymore. Had it ever?
Yeah, maybe. Long ago.
The glass was so thick and dirty that by a trick of light, Gray could see his reflection in it, in hexagon after hexagon.
It made him mad that the secure rooms, the ones like his, had wire hexagons in the window glass and dead bolts in the heavy steel doors, and that the doors had little steel sliding windows so they could spy on you and shove food through without coming in, like you were too dirty to get close to. It made him even madder that the secure rooms were right on the quad. That was extra torture, probably on purpose, so when you heard the other losers playing basketball you had to remember that you weren't going to get outside till they finally scheduled your trial.
Losers.
Six sides to a hexagon.
How many sides to a loser?
How many sides to me?
Son, brother. Friend? Archer. Drummer.
That's five.
What about six? The sixth side.
Come on, the sixth side!
As if he were dreaming, Gray saw his reflected face morph into Lindsay's: friendly, then worried, then scared; then into Zorro's: disdainful, jeering, finally incredulous.
Son, brother, friend. Archer. Drummer.
Murderer.
If you havent read this book I highly suggest it because it is so amazing.
