Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

I decided to read this book after having a number of students at the school that I was student teaching at not be able to tell me anything about the story. I was amazed that they didn’t have an idea about what was going on but they could read to me passages from the book with very little issue with the vocabulary. They did keep reading the book and my time in their classroom was over before any of them finished the book.

I was hooked on the book by the second chapter. The main character is a high school senior that used to be “Nerd Boy” until he got caught and arrested for doing graffiti on the school building. Now he is either a person to be avoided, a person to be snubbed or an extremely cool person, depending on who you asked. The book is written from Tyler’s point of view. He opens up about many of the social issues that people face in school. There are times that he seems to be suicidal but that is never sensationalized. There is hardly any romance in the book although Tyler talks about his interest in one of the most popular girls in the school.

The students who could not tell me anything about the story where 8th grade males. I think that part of the reason may be that they did not want to have to talk about the emotional roller coaster that they face in their lives.
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Posted by Helen in Book Reviews on May 29th, 2009 |