"Monster" is what the prosecutor called 16-year-old Steve Harmon for his supposed role in the fatal shooting of a convenience-store owner. But was Steve really the lookout who gave the "all clear" to the murderer, or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? In this innovative novel by Walter Dean Myers, the reader becomes both juror and witness during the trial of Steve's life. To calm his nerves as he sits in the courtroom, aspiring filmmaker Steve chronicles the proceedings in movie script format. Interspersed throughout his screenplay are journal writings that provide insight into Steve's life before the murder and his feelings about being held in prison during the trial. "They take away your shoelaces and your belt so you can't kill yourself no matter how bad it is. I guess making you live is part of the punishment."

Myers, known for the inner-city classic Motown and Didi (first published in 1984), proves with Monster that he has kept up with both the struggles and the lingo of today's teens. Steve is an adolescent caught up in the violent circumstances of an adult world--a situation most teens can relate to on some level. Readers will no doubt be attracted to the novel's handwriting-style typeface, emphasis on dialogue, and fast-paced courtroom action. By weaving together Steve's journal entries and his script, Myers has given the first-person voice a new twist and added yet another worthy volume to his already admirable body of work. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-Steve Harmon, 16, is accused of serving as a lookout for a robbery of a Harlem drugstore. The owner was shot and killed, and now Steve is in prison awaiting trial for murder. From there, he tells about his case and his incarceration. Many elements of this story are familiar, but Myers keeps it fresh and alive by telling it from an unusual perspective. Steve, an amateur filmmaker, recounts his experiences in the form of a movie screenplay. His striking scene-by-scene narrative of how his life has dramatically changed is riveting. Interspersed within the script are diary entries in which the teen vividly describes the nightmarish conditions of his confinement. Myers expertly presents the many facets of his protagonist's character and readers will find themselves feeling both sympathy and repugnance for him. Steve searches deep within his soul to prove to himself that he is not the "monster" the prosecutor presented him as to the jury. Ultimately, he reconnects with his humanity and regains a moral awareness that he had lost. Christopher Myers's superfluous black-and-white drawings are less successful. Their grainy, unfocused look complements the cinematic quality of the text, but they do little to enhance the story. Monster will challenge readers with difficult questions, to which there are no definitive answers. In some respects, the novel is reminiscent of Virginia Walter's Making Up Megaboy (DK Ink, 1998), another book enriched by its ambiguity. Like it, Monster lends itself well to classroom or group discussion. It's an emotionally charged story that readers will find compelling and disturbing.Edward Sullivan, New York Public Library Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
What if you were 16 years old, on trial for felony murder, and your degree of guilt had become confused within your own mind? How would you discover the truth? Monster, winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, is written as the screenplay that prisoner Steve Harmon creates during his incarceration and trial, in an attempt to reconstruct and reconfigure the events of the crime. The production is recorded as a full-cast dramatization, and it's difficult to imagine how it might have been accomplished more effectively. The youth and innocence of Jeron Alston's voice, as Steve, summons the listener into his limited reality and serves as a counterpoint to the authenticity of the courtroom drama, presented through the voices of the prosecutor, the D.A., the defendants, and the witnesses. Flashbacks deliver the backstory and raise essential doubts in the mind of the listener. A superb recording of an intriguing work. T.B. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Myers combines an innovative format, complex moral issues, and an intriguingly sympathetic but flawed protagonist in this cautionary tale of a 16-year-old on trial for felony murder. Steve Harmon is accused of acting as lookout for a robbery that left a victim dead; if convicted, Steve could serve 25 years to life. Although it is clear that Steve did participate in the robbery, his level of involvement is questionable, leaving protagonist and reader to grapple with the question of his guilt. An amateur filmmaker, Steve tells his story in a combination of film script and journal. The "handwritten" font of the journal entries effectively uses boldface and different sizes of type to emphasize particular passages. The film script contains minimal jargon, explaining camera angles (CU, POV, etc.) when each term first appears. Myers' son Christopher provides the black-and-white photos, often cropped and digitally altered, that complement the text. Script and journal together create a fascinating portrait of a terrified young man wrestling with his conscience. The tense drama of the courtroom scenes will enthrall readers, but it is the thorny moral questions raised in Steve's journal that will endure in readers' memories. Although descriptions of the robbery and prison life are realistic and not overly graphic, the subject matter is more appropriate for high-school-age than younger readers. Debbie Carton

From Kirkus Reviews
PLB 0-06-028078-6 In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty's Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day's action. Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist's guilt or innocence. The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve's terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers's point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a ``positive moral decision'' was not made. (illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 12-14) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Booklist, Editors' Choice 1999
"Myers grapples with complex moral questions that will definitely make readers stop and think.

Review
"Myers combines an innovative format, complex moral issues, and an intriguingly sympathetic but flawed protagonist in this cautionary tale of a 16-year-old on trial for felony murder."  --Booklist

Book Description

FADE IN: INTERIOR: Early morning in CELL BLOCK D, MANHATTAN DETENTION CENTER.

Steve (Voice-Over)
Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady prosecutor called me ... Monster.

Card catalog description
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

ANNOTATION

1999 National Book Award nominee for Young People's Literature.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me.

MONSTER

FADE IN; INTERIOR COURT. A guard sits at a desk behind STEVE. KATHY O'BRIEN, STEVE's lawyer, is all business as she talks to STEVE. O'BRIEN

Let me make sure you understand what's going on. Both you and this King character are on trial for felony murder. Felony murder is as serious as it gets .. When you're in court, you sit there and pay attention. You let the jury know that you think the case is as serious as they do. STEVE

You think we're going to win? O'BRIEN (seriously)

It probably depends on what you mean by "win".

FROM THE CRITICS

Cathy Young - Cathy Young Cathy Young is the founder of www.read-this.com, which specializes in creating web sites for authors, illustrators, and publishers.

FADE IN: Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon sits on the edge of a cot in Cell Block D of the Manhattan Detention Center. A dingy gray, early morning light filters in from the window and splashes his light brown face. Next to him, as the camera moves into focus, we see the suit he will wear to court. His trial starts today.

This is the beginning of "Monster!" -- a film written and directed by and also starring Steve Harmon. It's the "incredible story of how one guy's life was turned around by a few events, and how he might have to spend the rest of his life behind bars...told as it actually happened."

Cinema Vérité, you say? That's a term that Steve's film teacher might use to describe a film that "conveys realism." No, "Monster!" is even more real (and frightening) than that. This is the story of what happens when the world turns inside out for Steve Harmon, when the teen finds himself on trial for felony murder. In order to cope as the drama of his life unfolds, Steve blocks out the events and dialogue that swirl around him. He's the writer, the director, and the star of his own real-life horror story. And eerily, he has no idea how "Monster!" will end.

Neither do we.

What is certain is that Monster, Walter Dean Myers's new blockbuster novel, will captivate readers' imaginations from its opening pages until long after the last scene fades. In fact, Myers unravels Steve Harmon's story so masterfully, so sensitively, that very few readers will be able to set the book down without feeling as though their own lives have been changed somehow. Yes, Monster is that good.

Who are this novel's intended readers? More specifically, who should they be? Some consideration of these questions is necessary for this unusual book. Mature teens will devour Monster. Adults will too, and in fact will find the mixed screenplay/journal format refreshing and fast-paced, not kid-like at all. Frankly, though, I believe younger teens may be impacted most profoundly (and positively) by the story of Steve Harmon, who stumbles almost unknowingly into a nightmare that might keep him locked behind bars the rest of his life. However, these younger teen readers may need some guidance and support while reading Monster. It's a gritty tale. While Myers deals discreetly with the jail's lack of privacy (open toilets) and frequent invasions of privacy (for example, sexual coercion between inmates), he doesn't obscure those realities. We watch Steve sit in that courtroom and sympathize with his stomach distress, which is not merely the result of nervousness over the outcome of the trial but worsened because he's not comfortable using the toilet in open sight of the other prisoners.

As he writes in his introductory note to readers, Walter Dean Myers, in writing Monster , hoped to show the steps that lead someone "from innocence to criminal acts and, eventually, to prison." The award-winning author spent months interviewing killers, drug pushers, prostitutes, and other criminals serving time in prison before he set pen to paper for Monster. These interviews revealed a common thread: "...that no one went from being completely innocent to living in jail in one dramatic step. There always seemed to be interim stages. Decisions to bend, not break, the law. Minor infractions...would lead to petty thefts. Petty thefts and fare-beating might lead to street-corner drug sales. Each experience...would give permission for the next experience. Eventually a line would be crossed..."

And that's where we find Steve Harmon: 16 years old and on trial for murder. His parents' hearts break as they watch the drama unfold from their seats in the back of the courtroom. Did Steve serve as the lookout when Bobo Evans and James King robbed the drugstore and then killed the store's owner in the commotion? Or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Is he being framed by a couple of losers he used to call friends? In the tension-filled courtroom, reality begins to blur for Steve. How on earth did he get here? Is he a monster?

Walter Dean Myers's new novel will shock, disturb, awaken, and inspire.

Children's Literature - Sharon Salluzzo

Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon has been charged as an adult accomplice to murder. Steve resorts to his passion for filmmaking to put some order to and make some sense of his ordeal; his trial is presented as a movie. The reader feels his panic over the possibility of spending life in prison and his fears of being beaten and sexually abused there. The attorneys present their cases before the jury and the drama builds just as it would in a movie. Steve feels the surrealism of the stark reality he is facing. The reader is drawn into the trial, trying to determine, as is Steve himself, if he is the Monster that the prosecutor says he is, or a victim of circumstance. The film script concept works well on many levels. The illustrations, intermittently placed, present Steve in various ways: photos with his mother, on the drugstore surveillance camera, in a courtroom drawing, and in his mug shots. They give an added sense of reality to the narrative. This is a powerful, intense, thought-provoking story. It is great for discussions about the judicial system, pre-judging, self-perception, parent-child relationships and our prison system.

KLIATT

To quote KLIATT's Jan. 2001 review of the Listening Library/Random House audiobook edition of this title: Written by the central character, Steve Harmon, in the form of a screenplay for a movie, this ... follows the 16-year-old from the time he is arrested for felony murder through his trial. A drugstore owner in Harlem is killed as two men rob his store. Steve is accused of being the "lookout" for the robbers, all experienced criminals. He is implicated because of a deal the felons make to reduce their sentences in this crime. Steve, one of the "monsters" of the title, has a loving family and a caring, experienced lawyer.... Depictions of what jail offers younger accused these days are graphic, but accurate and honest... (winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature; a Coretta Scott King Award Honor Book; and a National Book Award Finalist.) KLIATT Codes: JSA*—Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, HarperTempest, 282p. 18cm. 98-40958., $6.95. Ages 13 to adult. Reviewer: Jean Palmer; KLIATT , July 2001 (Vol. 35, No. 4)

School Library Journal

Gr 7-12-Walter Dean Myers' novel (HarperCollins, 1999) is brought to life by a full cast of actors in this excellent audio interpretation. The author opens this audiobook by discussing many of his interviews with young prison inmates and his desire to discover what drives them to a life of crime, what makes them become monsters in society. From the outset, listeners are caught up in Steve Harmon's life as he documents the events for the film script he is writing for his high school video club. Was Steve actually the lookout in a robbery gone awry in which a man was murdered, or was he simply at the wrong place at the wrong time? The suspense and tension remain high until the end when we are told whether the jury will find Steve guilty or innocent of the crime for which he is on trial. This auditory delight is presented in the clear, well-enunciated and articulated voices of a full cast of actors. The narrator, with his deep melodious voice, reads Steve's film directions and provides the quick scene shifts, guiding listeners through the story. His voice combined with the voices of the other actors, the strong plot, and the unusual story format grabs readers and holds their interest throughout. This interpretation could entice reluctant readers to become Myers' fans. Monster is a must purchase for all middle and high school libraries. English teachers should be encouraged to use this audiobook as a possible writing prompt or as an introduction to readers' theater.-Lynda N. Short, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, Lexington, KY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

AudioFile

What if you were 16 years old, on trial for felony murder, and your degree of guilt had become confused within your own mind? How would you discover the truth? Monster, winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, is written as the screenplay that prisoner Steve Harmon creates during his incarceration and trial, in an attempt to reconstruct and reconfigure the events of the crime. The production is recorded as a full-cast dramatization, and it's difficult to imagine how it might have been accomplished more effectively. The youth and innocence of Jeron Alston's voice, as Steve, summons the listener into his limited reality and serves as a counterpoint to the authenticity of the courtroom drama, presented through the voices of the prosecutor, the D.A., the defendants, and the witnesses. Flashbacks deliver the backstory and raise essential doubts in the mind of the listener. A superb recording of an intriguing work. T.B. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. ￯﾿ﾽ AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine