Thursday, October 16, 2014

Knockout Games

Knockout Games by G. Neri, 298 pages


Erica has just moved to St. Louis in the aftermath of her parent’s break-up.  A white girl in a mostly African-American neighborhood and school, she quickly becomes entangled with a group in the neighborhood called the TKO Club.  The club’s main form of entertainment is trying to knock out unsuspecting people on the street by punching them.  Erica has a video camera and videotapes several of these incidents and shares them among the members of the club and their friends.  At first being with then group, especially their leader, Kalvin, feels great.  She finally feels like she has some control. But more and more, as the game goes on, she starts to feel uneasy.  The victims are mostly people from the neighborhood who she sees after the attacks and some of them seem pretty badly hurt.  She worries that what they are doing is not just a fun game, but could be dangerous and possibly land her or other members of the club in jail.  A good portrayal of a real problem in St. Louis and other parts of the country, any teens who live in major metropolitan areas might like to read this book.

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