Lockdown
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Lockdown is the powerful tale of fourteen-year-old Reese Anderson, who has spent 22 months in a tiny cell at a “progress center.” Living in fear and isolation, Reese begins looking within himself to find a way out of the prison system.
Acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers offers an honest story about finding a way to make it without getting lost in the shuffle. Told with compassion and truth, Lockdown is also a compelling first-person read that "could resonate with teens on a dangerous path."*
When I first got to Progress, it freaked me out to be locked in a room and unable to get out. But after a while, when you got to thinking about it, you knew nobody could get in, either.
It seems as if the only progress that's going on at Progress juvenile facility is moving from juvy jail to real jail. Reese wants out early, but is he supposed to just sit back and let his friend Toon get jumped? Then Reese gets a second chance when he's picked for the work program at a senior citizens' home. He doesn't mean to keep messing up, but it's not so easy, at Progress or in life. One of the residents, Mr. Hooft, gives him a particularly hard time. If he can convince Mr. Hooft that he's a decent person, not a criminal, maybe he'll be able to convince himself.
Walter Dean Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York Times, called Myers "one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children’s books well before the cause got mainstream attention."
*Kirkus
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Maurice Reese Anderson is sentenced to 38 months in Progress, a juvenile detention center in New York, for stealing prescription forms for use in a drug-dealing operation. After 22 months, Reese, now age 14, is assigned to a work-release program at Evergreen, an assisted-living center for seniors. There he meets racist Mr. Hooft, who lectures him on life s hardships (having barely survived a Japanese war camp in Java), which causes Reese to reflect on his own choices. More than anything, he wants to be able to protect his siblings, who live with his drug-addicted mother, before they repeat his mistakes ( The thing was that I didn t know if I was going to mess up again or not. I just didn t know. I didn t want to, but it looked like that s all I did ). Reese faces impossible choices and pressures should he cop to a crime he didn t commit? stick out his neck for a fellow inmate and risk his own future? It s a harrowing, believable portrait of how circumstances and bad decisions can grow to become nearly insurmountable obstacles with very high stakes. Ages 12 up.
