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Summary
Summary
Cameron: "Deep inside, you know that whoever gets up in your face gets there because he knows you're nothing, and he knows that you know it too." Carla: "What I'm trying to do is to get by -- not even get over, just get by." Leonard: "I have bought a gaw-juss weapon. It lies beneath my bed like a secret lover, quiet, powerful, waiting to work my magic." Statement of Fact: 17-year-old white male found dead in the aftermath of a shooting incident at Madison High School in Harrison County. Conclusion: Death by self-inflicted wound.
Author Notes
Walter Dean Myers was born on August 12, 1937 in Martinsberg, West Virginia. When he was three years old, his mother died and his father sent him to live with Herbert and Florence Dean in Harlem, New York. He began writing stories while in his teens. He dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Army at the age of 17. After completing his army service, he took a construction job and continued to write.
He entered and won a 1969 contest sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children, which led to the publication of his first book, Where Does the Day Go? During his lifetime, he wrote more than 100 fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults. His works include Fallen Angels, Bad Boy, Darius and Twig, Scorpions, Lockdown, Sunrise Over Fallujah, Invasion, Juba!, and On a Clear Day. He also collaborated with his son Christopher, an artist, on a number of picture books for young readers including We Are America: A Tribute from the Heart and Harlem, which received a Caldecott Honor Award, as well as the teen novel Autobiography of My Dead Brother.
He was the winner of the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award for Monster, the first recipient of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults. He also won the Coretta Scott King Award for African American authors five times. He died on July 1, 2014, following a brief illness, at the age of 76.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"In this chilling cautionary tale, Myers revisits the themes of his Monster and Scorpions in a slightly more detached structure, but the outcome is every bit as moving," wrote PW in a starred review. Ages 14-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Middle School, High School) Myers's new novel takes the form of a ""Threat Analysis Report"" following a high school shooting. Though the incident is not specified until midway through the novel, readers will instantly recognize the Columbine-like circumstances. The school board's report consists of newspaper articles, police and medical examiner's reports, the journal of shooter Leonard Gray, and, most prominently, a series of interviews with the shooter's friends and alleged co-conspirators, Cameron Porter and Carla Evans. Myers's use of multiple documents invites comparison to his prize-winning novel Monster (rev. 5/99). Unlike Monster's unreliable narrator, Cameron fully recounts his role in the central event; as in Monster, Myers looks beyond a single perspective to the whole picture. Beginning with Cameron's extensive interview with the county psychiatrist, the author explores some of the questions he raised in Monster: how does a smart kid from a ""good"" family become involved in a terrible crime? Where does he cross the line? Are there any lines? Some analysis seems a little easy: Carla is a tough-yet-vulnerable incest survivor; Leonard's abusive father is a right-wing militant gun owner who takes Len and his friends to the ""Patriots"" club shooting range. Leonard's handwritten journal entries, laden with cryptic wordplay, reveal a disturbed mind about to go over the edge. Cameron's character is more complex; his dismissal of a racist incident (the all-white Patriots use an MLK Jr. picture for target practice; Cameron is black) portends his willingness to overlook other dangerous warning signs. Myers concludes unsurprisingly that the blame for such horrific violence transcends the individual, but his exacting look at the many possible players and causes in the events makes for a compelling story. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 7-12. Like Myers' Printz Award book, Monster (1999), this story is told from multiple viewpoints, and questions of guilt and innocence drive the plot and stay with the reader. This time there's a shooting in a high school. Len, a senior, commits suicide after he shoots a star football player and injures several others in the schoolyard. The actual facts of that carnage emerge slowly, as Len's best friend, Cameron, is interviewed at length by a therapist, a sheriff, and a threat-prevention specialist. Adding more perspective are newspaper and police reports, and Len's personal journal, which reveals his fury and hurt about his macho father and school bullies. The multiple narratives move the story far beyond case history, the chatty interview format is highly readable, and Cameron's voice is pitch perfect. One of the few black students in the school, he's an outsider like Len, but he's quiet about it, an ordinary guy. He doesn't want to stand out; he does nothing about the racism implicit in an image of Martin Luthering on a shooting-range practice target, and he's ashamed. It's this bystander role readers will want to talk about, as well as who is to blame. Why does Cameron just go along with things? What about the parents, the principal, the counselors who knew about the bullying and tell Len to grow up ? --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2004 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Walter Dean Myers brings a compelling twist and serious engagement of previously lightly trod themes in his version of outsider-shoots-to-kill-school-bully (HarperCollins, 2004). Through a variety of official documents filed months after the event, as authorities seek to assess whether the violence had been an occasion their intervention could have prevented, the narrative places the deceased perpetrator's best friend, Cameron, an upper middle class African-American teen, at the center of the investigation. Listeners come to understand the very real issues the school could have addressed assertively and effectively-ranging from "typical" bullying to parental psychological abuse to wasting the intelligence of some students because they lacked the social skills to take part of their own accord in the standard menu of institutional reputation-building activities. Chad Coleman, Bernie McInerney, and Michelle Santapietro read the various parts of investigators, Cameron and, through his diary, the clearly psychotic shooter. Each reader brings his or her various characters fully to life, pacing their performances to match the type of document-investigative report, field notes, personal writings-performed. Like the author's novel Monster, this excellent text is further enhanced and made more broadly accessible by its availability in audio format.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
When a shooting occurs at Madison High with two students killed and six injured, investigators try to get to the heart of the tragedy in hopes of preventing further occurrences. Absent or abusive parents, bullies at school, students feeling like powerless outsiders, access to guns, and a troubled student who's a "ticking bomb" waiting to go off seem to form the deadly combination, but is this after-the-fact analysis likely to help prevent future shootings? Told through transcripts of interviews, official reports, newspaper articles, Miranda warnings, and a handwritten journal, the story has the feel of an official report and about as much drama. The hodgepodge of documents and the dense print create a heaviness to the work, and readers may not have the patience to sift for the nuggets of insight the reports contain. Though the volume is not as effective in its innovative format as Myers's Monster (1999), the subject matter, as current as today's headlines, will attract readers. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Shooter Harrison County School Safety Committee Threat Analysis Report Submitted by: Dr. Jonathan Margolies Superintendent, Harrison County Board of Education Dr. Richard Ewings Senior County Psychologist Special Agent Victoria Lash F.B.I. Threat Assessment Analyst Dr. Franklyn Bonner Spectrum Group Sheriff William Beach Mosley Harrison County Criminal Bureau Mission Statement The Harrison County School Safety Committee, headed by Dr. Jonathan Margolies, is to investigate public school safety using interviews and all available records, with particular emphasis on the tragic events of last April; and to analyze and assess all pos-sible threats and dangers within the County's school community; and to report to the Governor of this State any findings consistent with imminent or possible threats to: Any student or group of students Any educator or administrator Any other person Any structure or building It is understood by the members of the Safety Committee that the generated report will not carry a prima facie legal obligation but that it might be used in some legal capacity, and that all inter-viewees must be informed of their Miranda rights. Madison High School Incident Analysis Report I -- Interview with Cameron Porter Submitted by Dr. Richard Ewings, Senior County Psychologist Cameron Porter is a seventeen-year-old African American youth who attended Madison High School in Harrison County. His grades ran in the high eighties and there is no indication, in his school records, of difficulty in social adjustment. He lives in a two-parent household and is the only child. The parental income is quite high, and there is no indication of deprivation. Cameron has been advised that the interviews will not be privileged and that they can be subpoenaed for any subsequent legal action, but that the primary aim of the interviews is for analytical purposes. He has agreed to be interviewed in an effort to cooperate with the Analysis team and has signed a waiver to that effect. He appeared at my office punctually, accompanied by his mother, who then left for another appointment. Cameron is a good-looking young man, neatly dressed, of medium to dark complexion. He seems reasonably comfortable and no more nervous than would be expected under the circumstances. A letter informing Cameron of his Miranda rights was drafted, signed by him, and put on file. The initial taped interview began at 10:30 on the morning of October 24. This was six months after the incident at the high school. Notes to transcriber: Please return all tapes to my office as soon as possible. Please indicate significant pauses or other voicings in the unedited draft of this report. Dr. Richard Ewings Richard Ewings: Good morning. Cameron Porter: Good morning. RE: Do you mind if I call you Cameron? CP: Fine. RE: Cameron, can we begin by you telling me something about yourself? Where do you live? Who do you live with? That sort of thing? CP: Sure. I live over on Jewett Avenue. I live with my mom, Elizabeth, and my father. RE: Can you give me your father's name and tell me what sort of work your parents do? CP: My father's name is Norman. He does quality control for Dyna-Rod Industries. They manufacture heavy equipment, and they lease it to building contractors. What he does is travel around and check out how the leasing end of their business works. My mother works for an office-supply company. RE: What would heavy equipment consist of? CP: Cranes, derricks, specialized vehicles. RE: How would you describe how you get along with your parents? CP: Okay. Just normal I guess. RE: Do you go out with them much? Are there family conversations, say, around the dinner table? CP: My father travels a lot. He's away about a week and a half every month. Maybe more, I don't know. We sort of -- I wouldn't say that we talk a lot. I wouldn't say that we don't talk a lot, either. We go out -- we used to go out to eat once a month. Arturo's. You know where that is? RE: About a mile off 95, isn't it? CP: Down from the mall. RE: Right. That's a nice place. Good Italian food. Do you enjoy eating there? CP: It's okay. No big deal. They like it. RE: What kinds of things do you talk about at Arturo's? Actually, what kinds of things do you enjoy talking about with your parents? CP: I guess we don't really talk that much. When we do talk -- usually it's about something -- maybe about their jobs or something. They talk about their jobs a lot. They're trying to -- they have these goals they work on. You know, what they want to accomplish every year, that sort of thing. RE: What do you think of their goals? CP: Their goals? They're okay. They have things they want to do. Financial security -- that sort of thing. They're, like, doing the right things. RE: When you say they're doing the right things, do you mean that you think they're doing the right things? CP: Yeah. Yes, I guess so. RE: How would you describe your relationship with your parents? Can you tell me how you think you get along with them, perhaps if there were different things you would have liked to have done with them than you were doing? CP: They asked me that at the county office. RE: And what did you say? Shooter . Copyright © by Walter Myers. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Shooter! by Walter Dean Myers 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.
