Steve Harmon is a 16 year old boy on trial for murder. Monster is Steve’s story as he imagines it might be as a movie script with some journal entries interspersed throughout. Steve is stunned and frightened by his predicament, because he is not sure how he came to be in the jail cell and court room where he now spends his time. He is extremely afraid that he will be found guiltly and be sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty. Steve is an avid movie maker and maintains his sanity by thing about his pridicament as a movie script. He maintains his composure this way until something happens like the prosecuter calling him monster
Authour Walter Dean Meyer tells a simple but gripping tale with Steve Harmon’s trial and shows all of the raw emotions that Steve feels as the witnesses give their testimony. Steve goes through bouts of depression as witnesses testify and he wonders if it is possible for the jury to believe the various stories told about him. This is an intense story, told in a compelling way, about a gruesome act which in a highly effective manner. Messages in this book range from; choose your friends wisely and don’t make trouble to life is unfair and can you never considered not guilty.
Myers, Walter Dean (1999). Monster. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
