Nora Tucker is the prison superintendent’s daughter, and Lizzy Bruno is Nora’s best friend. Writing about characters from different cultural backgrounds requires that same kind of care, too, and at an even higher level because poor representation can have a profoundly negative effect on young readers from marginalized groups.īREAKOUT has three main characters who do most of the storytelling. I’m not an expert in any of those things, so getting the details right required hours and hours of reading as well as consulting with people who are experts in those topics, who have the expertise that I lack. I’ve written about coral restoration, drug addiction and recovery, tornadoes, and genetic engineering. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015.Īs writers, we tell stories about all different kinds of characters and situations, and only some of those are drawn from our own experiences. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Though the look at societal racism, as in the prison system, is well explained, it’s the racism Nora and Lizzie discover in themselves, and their desire to change it, that will linger with readers. Messner ( The Exact Location of Home) shines a light on the ways that people are blind to their own privilege while quick to judge others.
Narrated by all three girls through letters, recorded conversations, and texts, this is an effective, authentically wrought look at how fear and ignorance can lead people to treat those of different races or from different places with suspicion. Elidee’s experience of racism as one of the only black people in town makes Nora and Lizzie rethink just how welcoming Wolf Creek is. But after two inmates escape from the local maximum-security prison, where Nora’s father is the superintendent and Elidee’s brother is an inmate, a new side of the friendly community is slowly revealed. Best friends Nora and Lizzie, as well as new girl Elidee, imagine sharing tales of ice cream and swimming. In Wolf Creek, a small town in upstate New York, middle school students learn that they’ll develop a time capsule project as a summer letter-writing assignment.
0 kommentar(er)
