April’s Book of the Month, is the ‘Book of the Moment’, is The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. 🙂

Clishmaclaver has no budget left to buy a new BOTM unfortunately >sob< so I’m making my own personal copy of this amazing, breakthrough, teen read, available for pupils/staff who wish to read it! How nice am I? 😉

What to say about this book? Do believe the hype!

Critics have waxed lyrical; “The Hate U Give is a didactic issues novel for teenagers. It is also a good book. Those two categories intersect only rarely, but The Hate U Give — a debut novel by Angie Thomas — manages the balancing act with aplomb.” –

Vox: Social issues YA novels can be terrible. The Hate U Give is a stunning exception

– sales have gone through the roof, there’s a movie in the offing, a societal nerve has been touched, and socio-cultural (American, British, Western..?) dialogues about diversity, racism, police violence, gender, you-name-it, will never be the same again. Yes, it really is that important a book. Transformative, accessible, unflinchingly honest, heartfelt…

“Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.“

 

Art credit: www.loonyliterate.com