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| Book | Searching... Chapmanville Public Library | YAF | Young Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A joke about killing the toughest teacher in school, the one who demands the most and gives the lowest grades, becomes a topic of serious discussion among the boys in the local hangout. Reissue
Author Notes
Lois Duncan was born on April 28, 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age of 13, her first story was published in the magazine Calling All Girls. As a senior in high school, she won Seventeen magazine's annual short-story contest. She continued to write for magazines after getting married and having children. She entered her young adult manuscript Debutante Hill in Dodd, Mead and Company's Seventeenth Summer Literary Contest and earned the grand prize, which was $1000 and a book contract. That first title was published in 1958. She published several young adult novels at that time including Love Song for Joyce and A Promise for Joyce, both under the pseudonym Lois Kerry.
After her first marriage ended in divorce, she wrote freelance magazine articles and taught in the journalism department at the University of New Mexico. After she married for the second time, she started writing books again. Her young adult novels included Ransom, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Killing Mr. Griffin, Night Terrors, Stranger with My Face, Don't Look Behind You, and The Twisted Window.
She also wrote works for younger readers including Silly Mother, The Circus Comes Home: When the Greatest Show on Earth Rose the Rails, Hotel for Dogs, News for Dogs, and Movie for Dogs. Her best-known non-fiction book, Who Killed My Daughter?: The True Story of a Mother's Search for Her Daughter's Murderer, is about her family's experiences following the murder of her youngest daughter in 1989. Her works have earned her several awards including three Parents' Choice awards, the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1992, and the 2015 Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America. She died on June 15, 2016 at the age of 82.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 UpÄEd Sala narrates the dramatic story by Lois Duncan (BDD, 1990) about a youthful prank that goes bad, mushrooms tragically as the participants try to hide the results, and changes the lives of all those involved. His sensitive, slightly raspy, and laid back voice allows listeners to hear the story itself. He reads at a slightly slower pace keeping the story flowing, yet allowing apprehension to build and tension to mount. Sala's special talent is that he does not try to differentiate between the speakersÄhe lets Duncan's words do this. The suspense builds from her words, and listeners totally forget that there is a narrator. A very effective way to introduce Lois Duncan.ÄClaudia Moore, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In a portrait of group guilt that recalls Duncan's I Know What You Did Last Summer (1973), five members of demanding Mr. Griffin's senior English class decide to teach him a lesson by kidnapping him from the high school parking lot and leaving him bound and gagged in a lonely spot out of town--where, before the students return to free him, the teacher dies. (Unknown to the kidnappers, he has been under medication for angina.) The prank is engineered by the stereotypically disturbed and evil Mark, who keeps the others in line, kills co-conspirator Dave's grandmother to keep her quiet, and is stopped just short of killing Susan, a ""little creep"" with glasses who's been lured into a decoy role by virtue of her crush on Dave. Shifting viewpoints among the five, their families, and the teacher's wife, Duncan allots the most attention to Susan, the least involved, and she lets her off most easily in the end. It's all a bit too easy, but well-greased as ever--another of Duncan's nonstop thrillers, with as cunning a hold on its readers as Mark has on his confederates. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A group of students kidnap their teacher to ``teach him a lesson,'' but their plans go awry when he dies, leaving them in a morass of lies and guilt.
