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Searching... Bayport Public Library | TEEN FICTION HOP | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | TEEN FICTION HOP | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina -- she's fearless.
Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul -- her life.
Author Notes
Ellen Hopkins was born in Long Beach, California on March 26, 1955. She started her writing career with a number of nonfiction books for children, including Air Devils and Orcas: High Seas Supermen. She has written about 20 non-fiction books. Her first novel, Crank, was written in verse and met with critical acclaim. Her other fiction works include Burned, Impulse, Glass, Identical, Tricks, Fallout, Perfect, Tilt, Collateral, Smoke and Traffick, which made the New York Times Best-Seller list in 2015.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Nonfiction author Hopkins pens her first novel, written in verse, introducing 15-year-old narrator Kristina, who reveals how she became addicted to crank, and how the stimulant turned her from straight-A student to drug dealer, and eventually a teen mom. On a court-ordered visit to see her slimy and long-absent dad, she meets-and is instantly attracted to-Adam, who sports a "tawny six pack,/ and a smile." Soon, Adam introduces her to "the monster" (there, she also unleashes a new personality, id-driven Bree). Her addiction grows, as does Bree's control. Readers get a vivid sense of the highs and lows involved with using crank ("I needed food, sleep,/ but the monster denied/ every bit of it"). Her life changes quickly: Soon she's dating two guys, both of whom use crank; says "Fuck you" to her mom, can't keep up with school, and loses her old friends. There are plenty of dramatic moments: The first time she does crank, for example, her dad joins her. That same night, she stumbles into a bad area and is almost raped, and Adam's girlfriend tries to kill herself. Later in the book, she does get raped and starts selling the drug for the Mexican Mafia. Readers will appreciate the creative use of form here (some poems, for instance, are written in two columns that can be read separately or together), and although the author is definitely on a mission, she creates a world nearly as consuming and disturbing as the titular drug. Ages 14-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Gr. 8-12. Like the teenage crack user in the film Traffic, the young addict in this wrenching, cautionary debut lives in a comfortable, advantaged home with caring parents. Sixteen-year-old Kristina first tries crank, or crystal meth, while visiting her long-estranged father, a crank junkie. Bree is Kristina's imagined, bolder self, who flirts outrageously and gets high without remorse, and when Kristina returns to her mother and family in Reno, it's Bree who makes connections with edgy guys and other crank users that escalate into full-blown addiction and heartrending consequences. Hopkins tells Kristina's story in experimental verse. A few overreaching lines seem out of step with character voices: a boyfriend, for example, tells Kristina that he'd like to wait for sex until she is free from dreams of yesterday. But Hopkins uses the spare, fragmented style to powerful effect, heightening the emotional impact of dialogues, inner monologues, and devastating scenes, including a brutal date rape. Readers won't soon forget smart, sardonic Kristina; her chilling descent into addiction; or the author's note, which references her own daughter's struggle with the monster. --Gillian Engberg Copyright 2004 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Seventeen-year-old Kristina Snow is introduced to crank on a trip to visit her wayward father. Caught up in a fast-paced, frightening, and unfamiliar world, she morphs into "Bree" after she "shakes hands with the monster." Her fearless, risk-taking alter ego grows stronger, "convincing me to be someone I never dreamed I'd want to be." When Kristina goes home, things don't return to normal. Although she tries to reconnect with her mother and her former life as a good student, her drug use soon takes over, leaving her "starving for speed" and for boys who will soon leave her scarred and pregnant. Hopkins writes in free-verse poems that paint painfully sharp images of Kristina/Bree and those around her, detailing how powerful the "monster" can be. The poems are masterpieces of word, shape, and pacing, compelling readers on to the next chapter in Kristina's spiraling world. This is a topical page-turner and a stunning portrayal of a teen's loss of direction and realistically uncertain future.-Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Hypnotic and jagged free verse wrenchingly chronicles 16-year-old Kristina's addiction to crank. Kristina's daring alter ego, Bree, emerges when "gentle clouds of monotony" smother Kristina's life--when there's nothing to do and no one to connect with. Visiting her neglectful and druggy father for the first time in years, Bree meets a boy and snorts crank (methamphetamine). The rush is irresistible and she's hooked, despite a horrible crank-related incident with the boy's other girlfriend. Back home with her mother, Kristina feels both ignored and smothered, needing more drugs and more boys--in that order. One boy is wonderful and one's a rapist, but it's crank holding Bree up at this point. The author's sharp verse plays with spacing on the page, sometimes providing two alternate readings. In a too brief wrap-up, Kristina keeps her baby (a product of rape) while Hopkins--realistically--offers no real conclusion. Powerful and unsettling. (author's note) (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Flirtin' with the Monster Life was good before I met the monster. After, life was great. At least for a little while. Text copyright (c) 2004 by Ellen Hopkins Introduction So you want to know all about me. Who I am. What chance meeting of brush and canvas painted the face you see? What made me despise the girl in the mirror enough to transform her, turn her into a stranger, only not. So you want to hear the whole story. Why I swerved off the high road, hard left to nowhere, recklessly indifferent to those coughing my dust, picked up speed no limits, no top end, just a high velocity rush to madness. Text copyright (c) 2004 by Ellen Hopkins Alone everything changes. Some might call it distorted reality, but it's exactly the place I need to be: no mom, Marie, ever more distant, in her midlife quest for fame no stepfather, Scott, stern and heavy-handed with unattainable expectations no big sister, Leigh, caught up in a tempest of uncertain sexuality no little brother, Jake, spoiled and shameless in his thievery of my niche. Alone, there is only the person inside. I've grown to like her better than the stuck-up husk of me. She's not quite silent, shouts obscenities just because they roll so well off the tongue not quite straight-A, but talented in oh-so-many enviable ways not quite sanitary, farts with gusto, picks her nose, spits like a guy not quite sane, sometimes, to tell you the truth, even I wonder about her. Alone, there is no perfect daughter, no gifted high-school junior, no Kristina Georgia Snow. There is only Bree. Text copyright (c) 2004 by Ellen Hopkins On Bree I suppose she's always been there, vague as a soft copper pulse of moonlight through blossoming seacoast fog. I wonder when I first noticed her, slipping in and out of my pores, hide-and-seek spider in fieldstone, red-bellied phantom. I summon Bree when dreams no longer satisfy, when gentle clouds of monotony smother thunder, when Kristina cries. I remember the night I first let her go, opened the smeared glass, one thin pane, cellophane between rules and sin, freed. Text copyright (c) 2004 by Ellen Hopkins Excerpted from Crank by Ellen Hopkins All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
