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A #1 New York Times BestsellerSixteen-year-old Starr Carter lives in two worlds: her poor neighborhood and her suburban prep school. When she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend by a police officer, it becomes a national headline. Khalil was unarmed. Only one person knows what really happened. But what Starr says could upend her community -- and endanger her life.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Starr has learned to adapt her personality to fit two worlds. "Garden Heights Starr" helps her ex-gangbanger father in his neighborhood grocery. "Williamson Starr" has a white boyfriend, and is one of the few black students at a tony prep school in an exclusive part of town. When gunshots ring out at a Garden Heights party, Starr and her friend Khalil leave. Soon after, Khalil makes an innocent but unanticipated move at a traffic stop, and Starr witnesses his death by a white officer. In the ensuing weeks and months, Starr deals with reactions: her own, her family's, and those of her inner-city neighbors and upscale private school friends. Starr's first-person narration creates an immediacy that draws listeners into the anger and grief.she is feeling, while also acknowledging that Khalil may have been involved with drugs and that gang activity is driving families out of Garden Heights. Debut author Thomas populates her story with true-to-life characters-flaws and all. Starr's family members are particularly well-drawn. Bahni Turpin perfectly captures dialect, cadence, and slang, providing each individual with nuanced tones. At times, Starr's voice is thoughtful and gentle; at others, it is spitting out four-letter words in frustration and outrage. -VERDICT A thought-provoking, highly current, and worthy addition that will enhance most high school collections.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A routine traffic stop turns tragic for two African American teens, leaving one dead and the other irrevocably changed by the shooting and its aftermath of legal battles, survivor's guilt, and race riots. Thomas's fictionalized story of the Black Lives Matter movement is powerful, and the star turn here by reader Turpin makes it all the more riveting. Turpin, who was PW's 2016 Narrator of the Year, delves into the character of Starr, who struggles with whether to come forward with the truth about the shooting when doing so means her own life will come under terrible scrutiny. She conveys the complexity of the 16-year-old protagonist who sounds both youthful and mature for her age, as she relies on code-switching to navigate two different social settings-her mostly black neighborhood and mostly white school-until, partway through the novel, she starts breaking all the rules she's previously used to compartmentalize her life. Turpin also turns in memorable performances for various supporting characters, especially Starr's parents, who come from contrasting backgrounds and approach Starr's crisis differently, and several of the kids at school. Turpin's remarkable sensitivity carries this performance to the ranks of greatness. A HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
An outstanding debut stages the debates convulsing America in the story of a teenager who testifies after a shooting "Girls wear their hair coloured, curled, laid, and slayed. Got me feeling basic as hell with my ponytail. Guys in their freshest kicks and sagging pants grind so close to girls they just about need condoms..." Then gunshots shatter the music. Fleeing from the party, 16-year-old Starr is led to apparent safety by her friend Khalil. Shortly after, their car is pulled over by a police officer. What happens next crystallises the Black Lives Matter movement and indeed, the whole debate about race in America. The unarmed Khalil is murdered -- shot at point blank range by the man Starr refers to from this moment on as "Officer One-Fifteen". Starr is the only witness to the crime and her 16-year-old shoulders have to bear the ferocious outrage of her race and community. There's a chilling scene where Starr witnesses a police officer force her father to lie on the ground as he searches him For her YA debut, Angie Thomas gives Starr a relatively stable home life -- her father, "Big Mav", is the proprietor of a downtown convenience store, and her mother is a nurse.She has two brothers, Seven and Sekani. The family own a pet dog, Brickz, and Starr gets to wear the expensive name-brand trainers of her choice. Starr's parents have sent her to a school in the suburbs dominated by white middle-class students. Unbeknown to her father, she is dating Chris, a white boy from school who can recite the lyrics to the opening credits of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. To further confuse things, Starr's Uncle Carlos is a cop who acted as a father figure while Big Mav served a three-year prison term during her childhood -- a point of tension between the two men. When she was 12, Starr's parents instructed her on sex education -- and on what to do if stopped by the police. "Keep your hands visible," her father advised. "Don't make any sudden moves." It's unnerving to read that part of the toolkit for raising a black child in America is to coach them on the dos and don'ts if confronted by the law. What makes this novel so compelling is the way Starr negotiates the relatively safe world of school, where she assimilates despite the soft racism of one or two so-called friends, and how she navigates the dangers of her own neighbourhood, where it's not uncommon to be caught in the crossfire of rival gangs. There is one chilling scene where Starr witnesses a police officer, in a revenge stop, force her father to lie on the ground as he searches him. "Face down," the policeman yells, his hands never too far away from his gun, humiliating his victim even though Big Mav offers to show his ID and addresses the officer as "Sir". Finally, she summons up the courage to make a statement to a grand jury. The world outside waits to learn if the officer who killed Khalil will face charges. As the tension mounts, the reader suffers with Starr's quite ordinary friends and family as they hurtle through extraordinary experiences and circumstances. The first-person narrative is simply beautiful to read, and I felt I was observing the story unfold in 3D as the characters grew flesh and bones inside my mind. The Hate U Give is an outstanding debut novel and says more about the contemporary black experience in America than any book I have read for years, whether fiction or non-fiction. It's a stark reminder that, instead of seeking enemies at its international airports, America should open its eyes and look within if it's really serious about keeping all its citizens safe. - Alex Wheatle.
New York Review of Books Review
Representing: Angie Thomas's first novel, "The Hate U Give," about the police killing of an unarmed black teenager, has been a stalwart of the young adult hardcover list since its release late in February - it debuted at No. 1 and, after 18 weeks on the list, is back in the top position. Thomas's book made news (including a front-page New York Times profile) partly for its topical story line and partly because Thomas herself, a 29year-old from Jackson, Miss., is so cheerfully a symbol of change in the publishing industry. Mississippi "has a great literary history, but the other authors are dead or white," she told her hometown newspaper in March. "As a kid, I would wonder, 'Is this something that can happen to me, the little black girl from the hood?' " Now that it has, Thomas has become a literary ambassador of sorts, visiting classrooms and, last month, advising would-be authors at BuzzFeed how to represent traditionally underrepresented figures. One tip: Learn your stuff. "If you were writing a legal thriller but have no legal background," she said, "would you do some research? So why not do the same when approaching marginalized characters? When I was writing 'The Hate U Give,' I had to research gangs. I have not been in a gang nor do I have family members who have been in gangs, so I had to research it. I had to look at firsthand accounts of that culture - not just what the media portrays. I watched documentaries and consulted with attorneys. This also applies to identity. If you're writing about a gay boy or a black girl, you need to talk to a gay boy or black girl. You have to go above and beyond to get it right. The internet is a beautiful thing for a writer, but we have to put in the work. I think that's key: Put in the work. Whether you're writing about diversity or a legal thriller, you have to put in the work." Still, Thomas has found some audiences more receptive than others - a fact that led her to young adult literature in the first place. "Not to throw shade or anything," she told Cosmopolitan in March, "but I feel like teenagers are much more openminded and willing to listen." Filters Off: Conservative commentators have expressed mixed feelings, at best, about President Trump's volatile Twitter habits. But Eric Bolling, whose book "The Swamp" hits the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 4, is a fan. "How can the same experts who spent the past two decades calling for 'transparency' in government be unhappy?" he writes. "I say, tweet away, Mr. President! Don't hold back!" ? 'Teenagers are much more openminded and willing to listen.'
