As a public high school teacher, anything that discusses school shooting is usually on my list. Everyone says that hindsight is 20/20, so I read informational texts as well as fictional accounts to learn what to look out for with a potential school shooter.

Give a Boy a Gun is intriguing. It is dark. The style of the book is captivating. Telling the story through snippets of interviews kept my attention and really highlighted the things that everyone should have noticed about the shooters.

Strasser includes updated statistics and pieces of information from real life school shootings that are helpful in painting a picture. School shootings in America have been a problem and are going to continue to be a problem until something is done. But who/what is to blame? Do we blame bullying? Violent video games? Broken homes? All of these and more are mentioned through the fictional accounts as well as the real life examples.

Overall, the book does a great job at bringing more attention to the problem, but we as the readers and the teachers and the parents and the young people all need to work together to identify solutions. If you want to be informed, read this book.

Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser- Note: This is the 20th Anniversary Edition of Give a Boy a Gun. This addition is still as relevant now as it was 20 years ago (perhaps even MORE relevant now). Strasser has updated many of the facts about mass killings since this book was first published. The novel is told through various people who were involved in a school shooting by two boys. It gives insight to what led up to the shooting (bullying) as well as how the boys developed their plan without others around them who saw parts of the plan taking shape realizing it. As it often in the case, hindsight is 20/20. However, if we educate ourselves about what to look for when someone is planning something so horrific, teach our students to say something if they see something, and advocate for anti-bullying education, maybe we can help be part of the solution for fewer mass killings, especially of children by children. #netgalley #todddstrasser #GiveaBoyaGun Publish date: July 1, 2020

Twenty years later, and all that's changed is the frequency of school shootings have increased.

Todd Strasser's Give a Boy a Gun is an epistolary novel, so it's told in snippets of information from multiple viewpoints in exploring how two young men, Brendan and Gary, came to be at a school dance with firearms and booby-trapped gym doors. Interspersed with the fictional account of these characters are quotations about real-world school shooters and information about guns and gun violence. While not a chronological read, and a little difficult to read in ARC format on my Kindle, this book is still a shocking, haunting look into the minds of boys driven to murder.

I wish we didn't still need this book twenty years after its initial release, but it sadly seems like we do.

Todd Strasser isn't one to shy away from difficult, but important, topics. "Give a Boy a Gun" is, unfortunately, still timely, even 20 years after it was originally published. Told in the form of interviews with various students, teachers, etc., we come to see how bullying can push some people to unthinkable actions. The thoughts expressed by some of the adults and "popular kids" in the novel may seem unrealistic or extreme, but all too often warning signs are ignored and bullying behaviors are justified rather than punished. Strasser's novel definitely provides opportunity for discussion.

I did not really enjoy this book. I have read a lot of YA about gun violence, but with it was too difficult for me to follow with the snippets of the different perspectives and people talking.

I was honestly torn on this book. I saw it and requested to read it because I was interested to see what goes through a person's mind to want to harm other people.

We get that in this story. We find out why two teenage boys did what they did. Bullying through and through. They wanted the people who hurt them or did them wrong to feel how they felt at that moment of time. They wanted them to know that it was not right it was not cool. They wanted their revenge. It was not right at all and yet through the letters and the comments from those that were affected we see that some have no remorse on how they treated these boys.

I gave this book three stars because of the way the story was told. I would start reading and then the storyline would be broken up and I would be reading a comment from someone and then a statistic. Then back to the story, start getting into it and then it starts all over again. I understand the way the author did it but it was not something I liked as it took me away from the story. I would highly suggest maybe before the start of the next chapter then do the comment from whoever was interviewed and then a statistic. It was very interesting to see what the statistics were through the out years on gun violence. You never really know how bad it is until you see the numbers. It is horrible, it is sad, it is heartbreaking. It is something that should never happen. Kids should never be able to get their hands on guns. Yet, it seems that it always is happening.

Some things were repeated in the afterword which is not too much of a bother but I don't like things to be repeated when I am reading. I am very weird about that.

I wish I could have given this more than three stars but it was hard for me too.

One quote that stood out to me from Jack Phillips: "Sometimes at a gun show I see those foreign-made weapons. Some of them come from countries we once considered our enemies. Part of me can't help thinking that they must be laughing their heads off at us. They don't have to go to war against us anymore. All they have to do is sell us guns, and we'll do the job for them. And the darnedest part of it is they make a profit."

Give a Boy a Gun, with its powerful message should be in every classroom library. The structure of the text is one that will prove invaluable when encouraging reluctant readers. I will be adding this title to my classroom in September.

20 Anniversary novel formatted as a series of comments from friends, family and victims of a school attack and shooting situation. Realistically presented. Tense and emotionally charged. Realistic and readable. Wish it had been longer and involved more in every phase of the time-line leading up to and during the attack.

Absolutely devastating. With a haunting mixture of legitimate statistics and facts paired with an intriguing narrative style, this book takes a leap to make you question your stance on gun control.

While a work of fiction, the novel reads as a quot-aton of real life. The cast of characters seem too real for those of us who have grown up in the era of mass shootings/school shootings.

This book is a definite do not miss! 5/5.

A powerful text, worthy of consideration and still extremely relevant. I would be glad to add a hard copy of this to my collection.