Lockdown

January 11, 2010
Maurice “Reese” Anderson is sentenced to 38 months in Progress, a juvenile detention center in New York, for stealing prescription forms for use in a drug-dealing operation. After 22 months, Reese, now age 14, is assigned to a work-release program at Evergreen, an assisted-living center for seniors. There he meets racist Mr. Hooft, who lectures him on life’s hardships (having barely survived a Japanese war camp in Java), which causes Reese to reflect on his own choices. More than anything, he wants to be able to protect his siblings, who live with his drug-addicted mother, before they repeat his mistakes (“The thing was that I didn’t know if I was going to mess up again or not. I just didn’t know. I didn’t want to, but it looked like that’s all I did”). Reese faces impossible choices and pressures—should he cop to a crime he didn’t commit? stick out his neck for a fellow inmate and risk his own future? It’s a harrowing, believable portrait of how circumstances and bad decisions can grow to become nearly insurmountable obstacles with very high stakes. Ages 12–up.

March 1, 2010
Gr 9 Up-Maurice (Reese) Anderson, 14, stole prescription pads to make easy money for his family. Now he's serving time in a detention center. Working at a nursing home, he meets Mr. Hooft, who tells him that he doesn't like colored people or criminals. An antagonistic relationship quickly develops between them as Mr. Hooft verbally attacks the teen each time he attempts to carry out his duties. But there is greater trouble for Reese back at Progress; his impulsive behavior has left him at odds with the lead guard and the newly arrived gang leader. Now he must control his volatile and sometimes violent behavior when he is provoked as he awaits his appearance before the parole board. His fellow detainees have a wide variety of backgrounds, each offering a thread of connection to readers. Returning to common themes of justice, free will, and consequence, Myers again explores the mind of a young man struggling to survive the streets of Harlem. This latest work, while well written, doesn't achieve the emotional resonance of Paul Volponi's similar "Rikers High" (Viking, 2010). The characters feel static, and the depictions of the justice system and racial tensions will be familiar to many of Myers's readers. Hooft's incarceration in the Japanese camps during World War II is a somewhat unexpected revelation, but needs more historical background. Though not the author's most powerful work, this book has an audience waiting for it and should be purchased for most collections."Chris Shoemaker, New York Public Library"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2009
Grades 7-10 Myers takes readers inside the walls of a juvenile corrections facility in this gritty novel. Fourteen-year-old Reese is in the second year of his sentence for stealing prescription pads and selling them to a neighborhood dealer. He fears that his life is headed in a direction that will inevitably lead him upstate, to the kind of prison you dont leave. His determination to claw his way out of the downward spiral is tested when he stands up to defend a weaker boy, and the resulting recriminations only seem to reinforce the impossibility of escaping a hopeless future. Reeses first-person narration rings with authenticity as he confronts the limits of his ability to describe his feelings, struggling to maintain faith in himself; Myers storytelling skills ensure that the messages he offers are never heavy-handed. The question of how to escape the cycle of violence and crime plaguing inner-city youth is treated with a resolution that suggests hope, but doesnt guarantee it. A thoughtful book that could resonate with teens on a dangerous path.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2010
Fourteen-year-old Reese stole prescription pads and sold them to a drug dealer. Now he's in a Bronx juvenile detention facility, trying to make the right choices to earn an early release. But Reese has a host of things working against him. Myers returns to a familiar milieu to riff on favorite themes: hard luck, second chances, overcoming adversity, living with purpose and determination.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

March 1, 2010
Fourteen-year-old Reese broke into a doctor's office, stole prescription pads, and sold them to a drug dealer. Now he's in a juvenile detention facility in the Bronx, trying to make the right choices, the ones that will bring him an early release date. Reese has a host of things working against him: a penchant for fighting his fellow inmates, a disadvantaged background, a dysfunctional family (a drug-addicted mother, an absentee father, an older brother running with the wrong crowd). But there are also people who give him hope: a smart younger sister who seems bent on making a better life for herself; a prison superintendent who is able to overlook Reese's problems to see his potential; and, at Reese's work release program, a cantankerous old man with his own troubled past. Myers returns to a familiar milieu to riff on favorite themes: hard luck, second chances, overcoming adversity, living with purpose and determination.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)