Picoult, Jodi.
NINETEEN MINUTES
New York : Atria Books, 2007
IL AD
ISBN 0743496728

(2 booktalks)

“In nineteen minutes you can mow the front lawn, color you hair, watch a third of a hockey game...In nineteen minutes you can order a pizza and get it delivered...In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.” So begins Jodi Picoult's tale of a school shooting.

Peter Houghton, a sophomore at Sterling High School, wants revenge for years of bullying by kids in the popular crowd, specifically Matt Royston and Drew Girard. He gets it by going on a shooting rampage that lasts nineteen minutes, leaving nine students and one teacher dead. Josie Cormier, a friend of Peter's until middle school when she joined the popular crowd, is an eye-witness to one of the murders and is the daughter of the judge who will preside in Peter's trial.

The novel explores the deep-seated emotions of both teens and their mothers as they all try to deal with the after shocks of the tragedy. Picoult uses flashbacks to explore how Peter came to his boiling point, yet stays in the present as he is tried for ten counts of 1st degree murder. Who is to blame? Readers are left to ponder if anyone is really who they pretend to be in public.  (Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award, 2011)

Booktalk #2

There was a part of Josie Cormier that wondered what would happen if she let them all in on the secret -- that some mornings, it was hard to get out of bed and put on someone else's smile; that she was standing on air, a fake who laughed at all the right jokes and whispered all the right gossip and attracted the right guy, a fake who had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be real...and who, when you got right down to it, didn't want to remember because it hurt even more than this. To find out what Josie is hiding from everyone or why she can’t be true to herself read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult.  (Katie Tolley,  KJ-Tolley@wiu.edu, college student)