Scott reviewed The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
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4 stars
Great characters
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Published Dec. 1, 2017 by Harperaudio.
The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting.
The Hate U Give was published on February 28, 2017, by HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray, which had won a bidding war for the rights to the novel. The book was …
The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting.
The Hate U Give was published on February 28, 2017, by HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray, which had won a bidding war for the rights to the novel. The book was a commercial success, debuting at number one on The New York Times young adult best-seller list, where it remained for 50 weeks. It won several awards and received critical praise for Thomas's writing and timely subject matter. In writing the novel, Thomas attempted to expand readers' understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as difficulties faced by black Americans who employ code switching. These themes, as well as the vulgar language, attracted some controversy and caused the book to be one of the most challenged books of 2017 and 2018 according to the American Library Association.
Great characters
Absolutely stunning novel that has lost none of its power or urgency this many years after publication. Thomas has crafted a tale that completely holds the reader's attention, and the characters are fully three-dimensional and still manage to surprise the reader. The main character, Starr, goes through some heart-wrenching and painful experiences, and wanting to know how she would handle all that life was throwing at her kept me turning the pages. She demonstrates incredible bravery, and is open and honest about the code-switching dictated by the different parts of her life. The book is bracing and direct about the impact of police brutality on families, witnesses, and neighborhoods like. An astonishing work; the people trying to ban this book should be ashamed of themselves.
Absolutely outstanding book.
16-year old Starr Carter is a black teenager who goes to a white school. One night she is witness to a cop killing her friend Khalil for no reason, and this event changes her whole life.
Absolutely engaging cast of characters, told in a gripping way, wish every teenager read this book. Or anyone really.
I don't have the words to praise this book enough.
The story was excellent and it kept me interested through the end.
I found some of the character development a bit inconsistent. Some characters that I felt played an instrumental part in the life of the main character were a bit underdeveloped.
Incredibly powerful book. For me, this book exemplifies the reasons we read literature: to understand each other. It would be difficult for me to get this experience and understanding any other way. People’s lives are stories; to know them is to know their story.
using the Trayvon Martin case as a template, this is told from the perspective of a girl present at the time of the racially motivated shooting. I did not relate to the writing style and language used by most of the characters but maybe it's best that I think some of them were base, and not deserving of a hero's platform, because that might be the very point: it's still not a valid reason to kill someone.
that said, it's not a good book, yup, it's a bestseller but that's a reaction to the over-the-top brutality and racism of the police force being fictionalized and presented to young readers who NEED to know this sh*t has happened and is happening. it's almost a given that we will care about the issues presented; but a good author makes us care about the characters. isn't that the most important part? the humanizing …
using the Trayvon Martin case as a template, this is told from the perspective of a girl present at the time of the racially motivated shooting. I did not relate to the writing style and language used by most of the characters but maybe it's best that I think some of them were base, and not deserving of a hero's platform, because that might be the very point: it's still not a valid reason to kill someone.
that said, it's not a good book, yup, it's a bestseller but that's a reaction to the over-the-top brutality and racism of the police force being fictionalized and presented to young readers who NEED to know this sh*t has happened and is happening. it's almost a given that we will care about the issues presented; but a good author makes us care about the characters. isn't that the most important part? the humanizing aspect of inhabiting those characters inside a novel? this first time novelist is in for a pile of hurt when her 2nd novel is proclaimed as immature, cliché, and boring.
tremendously important book with lots of things to think about