Ship Breaker

Ship Breaker was great.  Along the lines of Hunger Games and other dystopian fiction we've seen out lately, it paints a picture of our country in the future after many years of destruction and shows what life is like.  In this case there are two kinds of people the very rich and the very poor.  The view of the poor is what you get to see at the beginning of Ship Breaker.

The story follows a young boy named Nailer.  Nailer works with a crew of "ship breakers."  Basically, everyone ran out of oil, the city of New Orleans was flooded time and time again, hurricanes come all the time now (the poles have melted), and all the boats and tankers of the previous age are laid to waste along the gulf shore.  Nailer's and other crews break the old oil ships down for their parts.  It's a rough life.  There's not much to eat and Nailer is beginning to worry about what he'll do once he becomes to big to be on "light" crew.  On top of all this, his father is a druggie and drunk who abuses Nailer and causes problems all the time.  It's business as usual until after a storm (a city killer) Nailer and his friend and coworker Pima discover a majestic clipper ship washed up on their shore.  Nailer's seen the beautiful, sleek ships in magazines and from a distance...he's dreamt about what life must be like for the rich people on those boats.  As he and Pima check out the damage they discover one survivor, a girl.  They have to decide between helping this girl or just stripping the ship of everything - including her life.  They could be rich...they could have a better life....but can they just leave her there?

The rest of the book follows their decisions and the consequence of those decisions.  The book was fast paced and didn't drag at all.  Once they discover the girl, it all races by.  It also paints a picture of what our world might look like if we don't take care of it.  As they travel inland at one point in the book to New Orleans and Orleans II, Nita asks about what happened.  Nailer responds,

"Stupid," Nailer muttered..."They were damn stupid." Tool shrugged.  "No one expected Category Six hurricanes.  They didn't have city killers then.  The climate changed.  The weather shifted.  They did not anticipate well." 

Nailer wondered at that idea.  That no one could have understood that they would be the target of monthly hurricanes pinballing up the Mississippi Alley, gunning for anything that didn't have sense to batten down, float, or go underground.

It's a creepy view of the gulf in the future.  In addition, though, this is a story about family and how you make it.  Nailer's dad is a bad man, but that doesn't mean that Nailer will become that way or has to.  Family and home are where you make them.  Nailer learns a lot about this as he fights for a friend's life.  A good read. 

Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

"What I would have liked to have done way to hop to this sucker and beat his head it, but it would've been the same as beating my own head in, because I would be the one doing the most suffering."

This is the dilemma that fourteen year old Reese Anderson finds himself in almost every day at the Progress juvenile detention center. Reese has been in for about two years for stealing some prescription pads, and all he wants to do is get out, have his freedom back. But every day situations get in the way. He gets signed up to work for a program at he jail where he goes out and works at a retirement home. It's weird at first, but even if Reese is just picking up trash, at least he doesn't have someone staring down his back all the time. He works with this old man named Mr. Hooft who is really crazy and racist, but again, this is nothing compared to life in the jail. Torn between wanting to help his friends not get the crap beat out of them all the time and not wanting to be in trouble, Reese has to navigate the world of the jail very carefully. If he plays his cards right, he could get out. But if he makes one wrong move...he's toast.

This book was a good look inside the juvenile jail...it's not a fun place to be. But jail aside, what really got me in this book were the conflicts that Reese felt inside. He wanted to defend helpless kids in the jail, but he knew he wasn't supposed to fight anymore.  Reese also has his family on his mind.  He needs to help his little sister Icy achieve her dreams, keep his mom off drugs, and hopefully his brother Willis out of jail.  His family needs him.  But how can you just stand by and watch a weak kid get beat up and not do anything to help him? Fighting is the only freedom he's got, so should he chill out or help his friends?  Lockdown takes you inside with Reese and shows you how he makes his decision about where the rest of his life is headed...if anywhere.

This great new book by Walter Dean Myers will be in bookstores this Tuesday, February 2.  Check it out!

Grade: A-

Dope Sick - by Walter Dean Myers

Fiction

186 pages

Dope Sick tells the story of a young man named Lil J who has gotten himself into a world of trouble.  How he ended up in an abandoned, rat-infested building with a strange man named Kelly is a long story, and Myers's book shows you glimpses into Lil J's life that show us how he came to be stuck in this run-down place and how he plans to escape from the cops outside...if he escapes at all.

After a drug deal gone bad, Lil J's friend Rico ends up shooting a cop which sends Lil J on the run.  When he runs into Kelly he thinks that man is just some homeless dude, but Kelly turns out to be much more.

Kelly talks to Lil J about his life and throughout the book Kelly takes Lil J back to important moments from his past.  Lil J sees mistakes that he made and Kelly offers him a chance to look back at his life and decide what he should change. 

I liked this book.  Lil J and Kelly live in a rough world of drugs and gangs.  Myers captures the language of the street with these characters and others, but also helps readers and Lil J himself take a good objective look at the life choices Lil J made.  Kelly doesn't push Lil J at all; he just shows him how his life went, and we along with our main character can see things that Lil J did wrong that he could go back and fix.  It's tough to read about some of Lil J's drug use, but it's also good to understand why he felt driven to do such things.  Lil J isn't glad about the decisions he's made, but he alone has the power to change them.  No matter how bad things get, we always have a choice of what to do next.  Hopefully we can move away from bad choices and make better decisions.  What will Lil J do?  End it all?  Try to get better?  Keep on down the same path?  Kelly helps him see the different stories of his life and hopefully he will make the right decision.  Read to find out.

Grade:  B-