Available:*
Library | Material Type | Item Barcode | Shelf Number | Status |
---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library | Teen Fiction Book Paperback | 120791002661951 | T STR | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
From Todd Strasser, a "truly shocking" ( Kliatt ) account of the prison-style workings of teen boot camps.
Garrett is an average fifteen-year-old, except that he's in love with an older woman. Even though Garrett gets good grades and hasn't had any real discipline problems, his parents decide to ship him off to Harmony Lake, a boot camp for teenagers. He is "kidnapped" by camp employees and transported there, where after a painful attempt at rebellion he quickly figures out that the fastest way to graduate is by following all the rules.
But no matter what rules he follows, Garrett soon realizes that the people who run the boot camp won't rest until his spirit is well and truly broken. And so, with danger at every turn, he plans a daring escape--with chilling consequences.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-In this vivid and realistic novel, Strasser describes the horrifying violence and injustices experienced by teens sent to a disciplinary boot camp at the behest of their parents. Abducted by transporters in the middle of the night, 15-year-old Garrett finds himself handcuffed in the back of a car trying to make sense of why he is being sent to a facility for troubled teens. Convinced that he does not belong in Lake Harmony, he has difficulty conforming to the camp's standards. As a result, he is subjected to continuous physical and mental abuse. Drawn in by two other students, Garrett takes part in an ambitious plot to escape this never-ending "behavior modification." Throughout the story, readers are given a strong sense of the hopelessness the teen feels, especially when he realizes that he is completely isolated from anyone who can help him. The ending is both realistic and disturbing as his fate at Lake Harmony is revealed. Writing in the teen's mature and perceptive voice, Strasser creates characters who will provoke strong reactions from readers. While most teens will undoubtedly identify with the protagonist's sense of being misunderstood by his parents, many will be outraged by the manipulation, torture, and hopelessness experienced by the residents at Lake Harmony. However, all of them will certainly find themselves engrossed in this fast-paced and revealing story about the hidden side of teenage incarceration.-Lynn Rashid, Marriots Ridge High School, Marriotsville, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his latest novel, Strasser (Can't Get There from Here) delivers an indictment of boot camps used to control unruly teenagers. Following a middle-of-night abduction, 15-year-old Garrett Durrell finds himself being driven to an unknown location in upstate New York. Upon his arrival at Lake Harmony, he is told that his parents have paid for his stay at the facility, "a highly structured boarding school specializing in intensive behavior modification," until he learns to act like a respectful son. While most camp attendees are there because of problems with drugs or violent behavior, Garrett's high-powered parents have enrolled him largely because he refuses to stop dating Sabrina-his former math teacher, eight years his senior. The staff is authorized to use any force necessary to alter the students' negative behaviors; this can include Temporary Isolation (24 hours of lying face down on the floor of a concrete cell), being shackled outdoors overnight, and a blaring drone of propaganda during meals. Additionally, students report on each others' infractions and abuse those who are making little progress. Unwilling to renounce his love for Sabrina, Garrett befriends two students who have devised an escape plan, and the trio flees north to Canada. Strasser paints his protagonist as heroic, sympathetic and rational ("The product Lake Harmony delivers is the child you always knew you had... not the one you got stuck with"), and when he is ultimately broken-bodily and spiritually-the tragedy is all the more profound. Strasser offers no easy answers, and nimbly navigates a host of moral gray areas. Ages 12-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Garrett's affair with his eight-years-older teacher is the last straw for his controlling parents, who send him to a ""disciplinary boot camp"" that sanctions physical torture and mental reprogramming. Graphic details bring this prison intensely to life as Garrett struggles to survive, then escape. Garrett's apparent conversion due solely to physical violence makes the ending slightly implausible, but provocatively ambiguous nevertheless. Bib. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Strasser explores the intriguing topic of militaristic boot camps, described as a secret prison system with 4,000 to 10,000 teens, but he undermines his effort with implausible characters and tedious violence. Narrator Garrett is an unlikely prisoner, an articulate genius incarcerated by his stereotypically heartless millionaire parents for having sex with his young math teacher. Her attraction to the self-absorbed adolescent, for which she loses her job and risks arrest for sexual abuse, is unconvincingly attributed to their mutual interest in manga and math. But teachers sexually exploiting minors comes across as harmless compared to the camp's physical abuse and psychological manipulation. Garrett, often in solitary confinement, suffers repeated brutal beatings. The other teens are largely thuggish and one-dimensional. They have bad skin, poor math skills and meager vocabularies, even though their parents can afford to pay $48,000 a year for camp. Only the scene where Garrett helps two desperate teens escape provides relief from the well-intentioned but heavy-handed expose. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Louis Sachar's Holes (1998) described a juvenile detention camp with tall-tale trappings. For a somewhat older audience, this documentary-style novel tackles similar boot camps without the fablelike buffer, delivering a troubling glimpse of what might go on in such camps (and backing it up with an author's note and sources). Garrett, 15, is trapped in the secret prison system for teenagers when his controlling parents, enraged by his affair with a teacher, are lured by the promise of a boot-camp brochure: The child who returns from the Lake Harmony experience is the child you always knew you had. Once at the camp, Garrett endures a battery of brainwashing techniques, including physical abuse, and eventually meets two other desperate teens who want to escape. Some plot elements don't add up; it's hard to believe, for instance, that the one supportive adult Garrett encounters a warden would let the camp continue without blowing the whistle. But as in Strasser's Give a Boy a Gun (2000), the real-world issues will hit a nerve.--Mattson, Jennifer Copyright 2007 Booklist