Teens: did you know that you can earn community service credit for writing a book review and submitting it to us? Today, we’ll hear from a teen who did just that. Find out more about how to earn community service hours from home at cheshirelibrary.org/teens/.

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, reviewed by Ali A.

The Outsiders is a book about a gang in Oklahoma called the Greasers. The Greasers are made up of of poor, violent teenage boys that are led astray in society. However, the Greasers are not the only gang in town. The Socs, short for the Socials, constantly battle for control in Tulsa. The Greasers face constant threats of being jumped (jumping is when a group of rival gangsters “jump” out of a car or building and beat up a member of the rival gang), stolen from, or being seriously hurt. Ponyboy, the main character of the book, lives with his brothers Darry and Sodapop, who are also fellow Greasers. Darry is an athletic and strong young man who is trying to raise his younger brothers after their parents died in a car crash. Darry dropped out of school to work full-time to support his family. Sodapop is a carefree young man as well and is one of Ponyboy’s best friends. Ponyboy is able to avoid serious trouble until one day he was walking home from a movie and got jumped by a group of Socs. After that encounter, Ponyboy and his friend Johnny are enjoying their time outside until another group of Socs try to finish the job and kill Ponyboy. However Johnny tried to protect his friend and accidentally killed one of the Socs. Now Ponyboy and Johnny have to escape the police and the Socs by hiding out. After the tragic killing, the Greasers and Socs agree to a gang war in Tulsa. I enjoyed the book and I’d reccomend this to readers who enjoy exciting novels with dramatic changes. One change I’d make if I were the author would be if the Greasers and Socs could achieve peace with eachother and end the practice of gangs. However towards the end, the Socs become somewhat more friendly with the Greasers.

4 Stars.

The Giver by Lois Lowry, reviewed by Ali A.

The Giver is a science-fiction book about a land in the future where no one has any freedom. The Chief Elder controls what your job will be, who you will marry, how many children you can have, what you will be named, when you can have a child, what you can eat, etc. Basically, the Chief Elder is a dictator. However the people who live in this Utopian land don’t feel restrained and instead feel happy that they can live in a world without any major problems. The reason the residents of this land feel this way is because the Chief Elder forces the residents to take a pill that restricts any feelings or emotions. This pill even makes it so that people can only see black and white out of their eyes! The Giver revolves around the life of a 12-year old boy named Jonas. In this Utopian land when a child turns 12 the Chief Elder selects each child’s future career based on the child’s skills and interests. As Jonas is at the ceremony and the Chief Elder assigns the careers, he skips over Jonas’ name. Jonas fears that he wouldn’t get a career and would be banished from the land, but instead he got an extra special job called “The Giver”. The Giver is the only job in this city that isn’t allowed to take pills, meaning they can feel all emotions and can see color. The reason for this is because the Chief Elder doesn’t allow residents to experience “memories”, so all memories of people go to The Giver. A lot of these memories are painful, but it’s Jonas’ job to experience them so that he can keep the community safe. As Jonas spends more and more time going through memories without the pills, he starts learning how bad his community really is, from killing babies and elders to lack of freedom, so Jonas decides he has to escape his backwards land. I’d rate The Giver a 2/5 because the storyline is very hard to understand. To fully understand what goes on in this story, you’d have to read Son and Messenger, but if you would read one of those books first, you wouldn’t understand what goes on in those stories without reading The Giver. I’d rate The Giver a lot higher if Lois Lowry did a better job of structuring her books that way readers could understand what’s going on.

2 Stars.