Myers, W. D., & Myers, C. (1999). Monster. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Steve Harmon is about to go into trial, he has been accused of murdering a store clerk during a hold-up. We see Harmon's case play by as if he is filming a movie, he is already being held in a correctional facility and we see his fears and his struggles going through this case. He is being represented by a lawyer, Kathy O'Brian, who is trying to prove his innocence to the state as well as the jury. He documents his flashbacks to times before the trial, and where he was during the time of the murder. In the end, he is found to be not guilty, but it does leave the reader wondering whether or not it was warranted.
I did enjoy reading Myers' book because the teacher and student in me were both dying to learn more. I see the audience for this book falling between grades 6-8th because it is a quick read that can be understood by students of these levels while still being able to hook them on the story line. I think that a good book to bounce and follow up with would be Right Behind You by Gail Giles. It is also about a young boy who is in trouble with the law, but I would recommend it more for 7th or 8th grade. Teachers would see the benefit of this book play out in correlation with a Drama Unit because of the inclusion of stage directions. I believe that since it is written in a script format is a major strength in the book because we can also do Reader's Theatre with it. A lesson that I would probably do with it is first teach the elements of Drama, characters, stage direction, etc, to the students using the novel. Then we could begin listening to the audio to show how a Reader's Theatre would sound like. After doing this for a few days, I would allow students to work in groups to preform a particular section, and to increase the rigor we could have them change the dialect from modern, informal English to maybe "proper" English, or to change the point of view to another character.
I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars!
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