An inner-city teen is on trial for his role as a lookout in a murderer/robbery in Walter Dean Myers' Young Adult novel Monster.
Myers has been writing mostly urban YA novels since I was a young adult myself, and I had enjoyed my previous exposure to his work. I picked this up, after a long layoff from his books, as I have been reading along with my college daughter's Young Adult Fiction class.
Monster has a unique format; portions of it are written as the protagonist's diary, and portions are written in screenplay format as the main character develops the skills learned in a school video club while waiting in jail. Most of the story takes place during the teen's trial, with flashes of home and school life. Photography and unusual layouts are of interest. The novel has a straightforward narrative but no easy solutions; in fact the teen's actual actions and motivations are left open to much speculation, and would definitely be worth talking about to a young person.
A good read that I picked up from www.paperbackswap.com.
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