This is not like the school shooting novels I have read previously (Nineteen Minutes, Hate List, She Said Yes). Emery and Jake are high school seniors who go to Mrs. Campbell's first grade class three mornings a week to teach them French. Emery and Jake used to date so they have a little conflict before the hostage situation occurs.
McDowell alternates between Emery and Jake's perspective with them letting readers know what is happening in the present as Stutts holds the class hostage and with flashbacks to their personal relationship and their family relationships.
After the Connecticut elementary school shooting, this puts a little more perspective on how elementary children react in this situation. These two situations are not alike, but I wonder if the children in Connecticut acted the way these first graders acted.
On the first page of the novel, Emery states: "And by the afternoon, three people were dead", but by the end of the novel only two people are dead. Is this an editing error or is Emery speaking metaphorically? I know we joke and laugh when we have the various drills in school, but if we were in the same situation as Emery, Jake, and Mrs. Campbell would we be able to keep our cool to protect the students in the classroom?
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