Book Synopsis:
Nora Tucker is looking forward to summer vacation in Wolf Creek--two months of swimming, popsicles, and brushing up on her journalism skills for the school paper. But when two inmates break out of the town's maximum security prison, everything changes. Doors are locked, helicopters fly over the woods, and police patrol the school grounds. Worst of all, everyone is on edge, and fear brings out the worst in some people Nora has known her whole life. Even if the inmates are caught, she worries that home might never feel the same.
Told in letters, poems, text messages, news stories, and comics--a series of documents Nora collects for the Wolf Creek Community Time Capsule Project.
My Review:
4/5 stars. This book was really interesting. I loved the style - with letters, text conversations, sticky notes, etc. It made me think about a lot of heavy stuff like racism and the justice system. Despite dealing with more serious topics, it was still funny and made me chuckle multiple times. I liked the characters and the story, but it took a little bit for it to really get going.
As someone who loves writing/journalism, I could relate to the main character, Nora, who liked to write her own news articles and interview people just for fun. It reminded me of a project I did back in seventh grade where I wrote a few news articles about current events at the school and interviewed my friends and teachers. I also just really enjoyed this style of book. I hadn't really read a book before where it's all just letters and notes, but this style is what persuaded me to buy this book in the first place
One downside of this writing style, however, was that I found it harder to really get to know the characters. There were three main characters - Nora, Lizzie, and Elidee - but, because you were only getting to know them through their letters or text conversations with friends and family, there weren't scenes where their actions or behaviors that showed their personality/flaws.
Something that surprised me about this book was how realistic the way the characters spoke and acted was for their age. The main characters are in seventh grade and I could really picture seventh grade kids doing and saying what they were. Sometimes, in middle grade books, it's either really childish and not how a middle schooler would act, or they're too mature, but this felt very much like middle school students. I would know, seeing as I just left middle school.
This book focuses a lot on racism, especially in the justice system. It was very thought-provoking and sparked a lot of great conversations with my dad about these topics. This book is very relevant now with all the riots against police and the BLM movement going on. It also references the Hamilton musical many times because another main character loves to write poetry and had recently seen the musical, so she based some of her poetry off of that.
The only main complaint I have is that it took a while for the story to really get going. For the first 80 or so pages there's not really anything about the prison break, which is the whole plot of the story. Once it did get better, however, I was into it and the last hundred pages were pretty intense.
This book is for any ages. There's no language at all and it's not a romance, so nothing to worry about there. It brings up a lot of important stuff in a way that's easy to understand for an elementary aged kid.
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