Hautman, Pete.
RASH
New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2006
IL YA
ISBN 0689868014

(3 booktalks)

In a future world where personal safety has gone a bit over the top, Bo Marsten is just one of the kids.  Well, it's true that both his father and his brother are serving time in prison.  But that is not that unusual.  After all, if it wasn't for the prisoners, there would be no one to do the manual labor.  Now, Bo has a bit of an anger management issue.  He has to keep it under control or he might just find himself in prison as well.  Even yelling at someone and making them feel bad is a punishable offense.  So when Bo is accused of inflicting a rash on a classmate, he finds himself in a work camp surrounded by fierce polar bears and criminals.  Will he ever found a way out of this mess?  And just who are the gold shirts that everyone fears?

Booktalk #2

The year is 2076. Verbal abuse, obesity and dangerous activities in the United States are against the law. Helmets and health food are in and sports are outlawed. Bo Marsten, 16, loses self control and hits another classmate. Sentenced to work at a pizza factory, Bo finds himself a candidate for the warden's favorite past time, football.  (Florida Teen Reads nominee, 2007-2008)

Booktalk #3

Rash is set in the future. In the future everyone is concerned with your safety. They even renamed the United States the United Safety States of America. Now in this future society they've added a few extra laws to help keep you safe. 
 
For example anything where you could get hurt, break your leg or twist your ankle, is now illegal. So no more Football, Basketball, Wrestling, or Soccer. Also if you do decided to participate in a sanctioned activity like riding you bike you have to make sure you are wearing you helmet, elbow pads, elbow pad liners, knee pads, knee pad liners, special shoes and anti gravity belt, or you could go to jail. If you forget to close your front door and your poor dog or cat gets out you could be sent to jail for possibly causing a car accident. 
 
But the worst crime, the one that could get you put in jail for years, is loosing your temper. If you loose your temper you could do other violent things like murder people or rob a bank. So to keep everyone safe they lock up all the people who've lost their tempers.
 
Now society isn't so bad. If you are one of the people not in jail you don't have to work a day in your life. All of your food, clothing, and housing are taken care of by the 25% of the population that is imprisoned. 
 
Well Rash is a story about Bo. Bo's older brother and Father have already been imprisoned for loosing their temper, and he is bound and determined that he's going to stay out of jail. But there's this one guy at school who loves to rile Bo up. He's been saying things about Bo's girlfriend, and what he might do when Bo's not around and Bo can't stand it anymore, and he looses his temper and hits the guy. 
 
Well now Bo gets to spend the next couple years of his life in a Pizza factory where he's in charge of adding sauce to about 150 pies a day. But what they don't tell you in school is that in prison they have an illegal football league, and Bo get a chance to be on the team.
 
If you like sports or adventure Rash by Pete Hautman is the book for you.  "Jami Schwarzwalder" <JSchwarzwalder@piercecountylibrary.org>