Citation:
Silvey, Craig. Jasper Jones. New York: Random
House, 2009. eBook.
Annotation:
Charlie is unexpectedly asked by the town outcast Jasper Jones for help
with a problem. This problem leads to
not only personal angst, but the discovery of many secrets in town and within
his family.
Justification for Nomination:
The developmental issue of
the book is coming of age. From the
start of the book to the end of the book it is demonstrated how one large
problem can change someone’s world view and cause them to mature. This happened not only with the main
character, but the whole town seemed to lose its sense of innocence and naivety
for the bad things that can happen in the world.
First person is the
writing style that is used for the book.
This is paired up with plenty of internal monologue for Charlie’s
thoughts. It was really interesting to
see Jasper Jones through the eyes of Charlie, who is an outsider looking in. The story would have taken on an entirely different
tone if the author would have used Jasper as the story narrator, but for the
message the author was trying to portray Charlie’s point of view worked the
best.
The dialogue in this story
seemed very accurate, the setting was in Australia and the slang seemed very
accurate for that area of the world.
Jasper spoke in a way that alluded to his social class of being a teen
that lives in the woods, because his alcoholic dad does not care. When the dialogue occurs in the story the
author does not use tags with it most of the time.
The plot of this story
kind of felt like person against society, the book took place in the 1960’s and
the town’s people seemed to be very narrow-minded and bigoted. Characters like Jasper and Charlie’s friend
Jeffrey had to suffer because of their racial ethnicity. The story is pretty interesting other than a
few conversations that drag on too long.
Genre:
Mystery / Historical Fiction / Problem Novel
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