YA book review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

 The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This was my #1 favorite young adult book of 2017.  I’ve book talked this novel with adults, high schoolers, and middle schoolers, and we’ve not been able to keep it on the shelves in the library.  It’s slated to be a movie soon, as well, so if you haven’t read this great book yet, pick up a copy if you can find one!

Starr Carter is 16 and caught between two worlds. She lives in an urban neighborhood that is poor, underserved, and what most people would describe as the ghetto. But she attends school at an elite prep academy in a wealthy white suburb, where she is dating an attractive young man, who is white. Her friends at home give her a hard time for leaving them behind, and Starr is hesitant to let kids at school know where she really lives.

One afternoon, Starr and her childhood best friend Khalil are pulled over by a police officer close to home. Khalil reaches for a comb, and the white cop shoots him dead in front of Starr.

What follows is all too familiar: the black community is up in arms, demanding justice, only to be met by a blue wall: the cops and prosecutors have little interest in investigating. Khalil’s name is slandered in the press, and Starr’s neighborhood becomes a battle zone between protestors and the police. At school Starr is hesitant to speak out.

But what Starr comes to realize is that what she knows can help break the tension between the two worlds, if only she can find the right way to speak out.

Author Angie Thomas tells the story through Starr’s first person narrative. Thomas takes a glaring look at injustice and police brutality and forces the reader to consider race in America. Give this book to every high school or middle school student you know. It’s that good. Expect a rousing discussion as a result of the topics covered in this novel. It’s a rallying cry for action on a topic that has plagued America since its inception.

This is the best of the bunch from a recent list of titles on a similar

topic; see also Jason Reynold’s All American Boys and Tony Medina’s 

I Am Alfonso Jones, or Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me.