Bang!
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Mann is only thirteen, yet he has already had to deal with more than most go through in a lifetime. His family is still reeling from the tragic shooting death of his little brother, Jason, each person coping with grief in his or her own way. Mann's mother has stopped eating and is obsessed with preserving Jason's memory, while his father is certain that presenting a hard edge is the only way to keep his remaining son from becoming a statistic. Mann used to paint and ride horseback, but now he's doing everything he can to escape his emotions: getting involved in fights at school, joyriding at midnight, and much worse. His father, at his wit's end, does the only thing he thinks will teach his son how to be a man he abandons him and his friend Kee Lee in the woods, leaving them to navigate their way home, alone.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a contemporary, hard-hitting survival tale set in a neighborhood where people get shot "for no real reason," Flake (The Skin I'm In) follows an African-American boy's harrowing initiation into manhood. Two years after Mann's seven-year-old brother is killed in a drive-by shooting, the boys' father decides to teach 13-year-old Mann, who narrates, the same lesson received by boys in African tribes. He drives Mann and his best friend, Kee-lee, into the woods and leaves them there to fend for themselves. Wild animals prove to be less of a threat than the people the boys encounter, and once they do return to the city, Mann's father turns them out again to find out what direction they want to take in life ("You wanna be a pimp well, there's a road that'll lead you there. Wanna be a thief, sell crack and live high and die hard well, that road's waiting for you too," says Mann's father). The method used to induct Mann into a violent world will spark as much controversy among readers as it does among characters in the book, but in the end, Mann (who fares better than his friend Kee-lee) does learn some important lessons that go beyond survival. There is a gradual yet notable change in his morality as he searches his soul to find what kind of man he wants to be. Ages 12-up.
