Bibliographic Information
Publisher: Recorded Books
Publication year: 2007 (Original book publication 2007)
Run Time: 21 hours 10 minutes
Narrator: Carol Monda
Reader’s Annotation
When Peter Houten opens fire on his own high school, killing ten people and wounding nineteen others within only nineteen minutes, the town of Sterling, NH is rocked to its core. But as the details of the convoluted case unfold, those involved find out that a situation can’t always be explained by surface details.
Plot Summary
Peter Houten has been bullied by his classmates every day since kindergarten. Quiet, weak, and an average student, Peter would rather spend his time writing his own video game codes than trying to be popular. However, eventually he becomes fed up with his daily torment and brings stolen guns and homemade bombs to school. Peter opens fire on his classmates, killing ten and wounding nineteen others. Caught in the crossfire is Josie, who used to be friends with Peter but abandoned him in middle school in favor of the popular crowd. Josie survives the attack but cannot remember anything that happened. She is devastated to find out her steady boyfriend, Matt, was one of the victims of Peter’s attack. When Peter goes on trial for his crimes, Josie attempts to reconcile her feelings about the shooting and remember what role, if any, she had in Peter’s decision to commit such a heinous crime.
Critical Evaluation
Picoult expertly examines every side of the story in Nineteen Minutes. Along with the shooter, many victims, and parents, she presents chapters from the points of view of Peter’s defense lawyer and police investigators. Picoult’s masterful transitions between narrators support the underlying concept that a mass shooting is deeply experienced by everyone in a community in a unique way. Peter’s mother experiences a form of grief even though her child is still alive, albeit in police custody. Peter himself maintains he did nothing wrong and was merely defending himself against years of abuse from his classmates. Josie spends the majority of the novel unable to remember the events of the shooting, but does her best to come to terms with the incident while simultaneously dealing with the death of her boyfriend, a casualty to the crime. Each character drives the novel in a unique way, which is what keeps the reader captivated until the last page. Perhaps most compelling about the audio version of the novel is the single narrator capturing the emotions and intentions of such a large ensemble of characters. The expression in Monda's voice changes slightly for each perspective from which the story is told. This is the mark of a talented storyteller, and a feature of the audiobook that will interest listeners.
Author Information
Jodi Picoult, 48, is the bestselling author of twenty-three novels: Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992), Harvesting the Heart (1994), Picture Perfect (1995), Mercy (1996), The Pact (1998), Keeping Faith (1999), Plain Truth (2000), Salem Falls (2001), Perfect Match (2002), Second Glance (2003), My Sister's Keeper (2004), Vanishing Acts (2005), The Tenth Circle (2006), Nineteen Minutes (2007), Change of Heart (2008), Handle With Care (2009), House Rules (2010), and Sing You Home (2011), Lone Wolf (2012), The Storyteller (2013), Leaving Time (2014) and the YA novels Between The Lines (2012), and Off The Page (2015), co-written with her daughter Samantha van Leer. Her last eight novels have debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Her highly anticipated novel-in-progress, Small Great Things, will be released this fall as follows: October 11, 2016 (US/Canada), October 12, 2016 (Australia), and November 22, 2016 (UK).
Picoult studied creative writing with Mary Morris at Princeton, and had two short stories published in Seventeen magazine while still a student. Realism - and a profound desire to be able to pay the rent - led Picoult to a series of different jobs following her graduation: as a technical writer for a Wall Street brokerage firm, as a copywriter at an ad agency, as an editor at a textbook publisher, and as an 8th grade English teacher - before entering Harvard to pursue a master’s in education. She married Tim Van Leer, whom she had known at Princeton, and it was while she was pregnant with her first child that she wrote her first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale.
She wrote five issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series for DC Comics. Her books are translated into thirty four languages in thirty five countries. Four – The Pact, Plain Truth, The Tenth Circle, and Salem Falls - have been made into television movies. My Sister’s Keeper was a big-screen released from New Line Cinema, with Nick Cassavetes directing and Cameron Diaz starring, which is now available in DVD. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Dartmouth College in 2010 and another from the University of New Haven in 2012.
Jodi serves on the advisory board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, a research-driven organization whose goal is to increase critical attention to contemporary women’s writing and to foster transparency around gender and racial equality issues in contemporary literary culture. She is part of the Writer’s Council for the National Writing Project, which recognizes the universality of writing as a communicative tool and helps teachers enhance student writing, and is a spokesperson for Positive Tracks/Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth, which supports youth-led charity fundraising through athletics. She is on the advisory committee of the New Hampshire Coalition Against the Death Penalty. She is also is the founder and executive producer of the Trumbull Hall Troupe, a New Hampshire-based teen theater group that performs original musicals to raise money for local charities; to date their contributions have exceeded $120K. She and her husband Tim and their three children live in Hanover, New Hampshire with two Springer spaniels, two rescue puppies, two donkeys, two geese, ten chickens, a smattering of ducks, and the occasional Holstein.
Source: http://jodipicoult.com/JodiPicoult.html
Genre
Fiction
Curriculum Ties
School Safety
Booktalking Ideas
Talk about the realities of gun violence and mass shootings in the country, including why some people feel it is their only option. Talk about Peter being bullied and experiencing PTSD from repeat attacks, and let the audience think about whether his reaction to repeated bullying was justified. Read a passage describing the aftermath of the shooting at the scene of the crime. Then give a rating from 1-5 and tell the audience why this is my rating, and take questions.
Reading Level/Interest Age
Barnes and Noble: Age 14-18
School Library Journal: High School/Adult
Challenging Issues
Bullying
Death of a Loved One
Depression
Language
LGBTQ+
Mental Illness
Murder
PTSD
Sexual Content and/or Nudity
Teen Pregnancy
Violence
Preparing for Potential Challenges
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-potential-challenges.html
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-specific-challenges-lgbtq.html
Why the Item Was Chosen
I included Nineteen Minutes in my collection because Picoult uses it to communicate the dangers of bullying, as well as the fact that there are usually multiple sides to a story. These are concepts crucial to adolescent development as well as life in high school, and Picoult takes her time explaining them from the perspectives of several characters in order to drive the points home. Many young adults do not realize the ramifications of their actions toward others. An action that seems harmless to one person could send another person’s psyche into a tailspin. Listening to Nineteen Minutes might compel teen readers to take a closer look at their own actions and the actions of their peers, and speak up if they see a potential problem before a horrific event like the one Picoult illustrates has a chance to happen in their own school.
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