This dark and poignant tale tells a very important story. he story chronicles the journey of 3 troubled and homeless kids. The story switches point of views from Curl a 15 year old prostitute to Custis a homeless boy who has escaped from his abusive "owner." The leader of this crew is Boobie who has just killed his parents and kidnapped his baby brother. This book deals with very difficult but important issues, and Rapp weaves tthe story beautifully. The slang is a bit difficult to understand in the beginning but once you become used to it, it adds a whole new element to the story. The story is distrubing and not easily forgotten but it is meant to stay with the reader. This haunting book is not one you will regret reading.

He used the word "kid" a lot. It seems that it is the trend these days for teeangers to call other teenagers kids. It gets a little annoying after you start reading it.

I think that he did a good job describing the actual life in a military school. I used to think that it would be cool to live in a military school. His book has changed my mind.

I don't think that the book title fits with the actual content very well. And there is really no climax in this book. It seems that he may actually write part II.

Ok i am a student. I read this book and i thought it was great. Thier was 1 problem that is why I didn`t give it 5 stars. the ending was a surprize to me. I think that he should have ethier Made a sequel to the book or he should have made the book longer. But other than that the book was great the suspense was most thrilling. Even though it was not a horror book it was still full of suspence. But I think that if you are looking for a clif hanger book well here is one. BROVO for Adam Rapp. so from a STUDENT IN A HIGH SCHOOL I say this is a must read.

I loved this book. It was fast-paced, and very funny. The main charcter was believable, and you sympathized with him throughout the novel as he struggled to make the best of a bad situation.

The book is narrated by Sura, a 13 year old boys who is in hamstock, a juvenile detetion center. The book had some great lessons about life such as that friendship will never die and you should never give it up. It has alot of painful things such as when Sura found the squirrel tail buried in the ground, because it belonged to Coly Jo's, his friend. It also had some action such as when Sura was shadowing the guard and he almost got caught by the gaurd. The story was kind of hard to understand because of all of the slang invovled. It had alot of funny parts in the story too, such as when Sura was talking about Nurse Rushing and how Sura was making fun of Boo, Hodge, and Dean Petty. This book had alot of profanity and some were funny and others weren't. This book had alot of depressing moments too, like when Coly Jo was put in the stink hole. Coly Jo was a great friend to Sura. I really enjoyed this story and I would recommend this book to any teenager to read.

I work in forensic nursing, and presently provide medical care to adult inmates. My interest in the novel was to gather understanding of the early phases of delinquency and apply that knowledge to the repetitive offender after age 18. Although this novel is targeted for the young adult, it is certainly a worthy book for older readers.

Adam Rapp writes about a young kid serving his time in Hamstock, a juvenile detention center that promotes violence, abuse, negative reinforcement, and a social structure worse than the kid's home and street situations. The kids learn quick to be just like adult cons. Although many of them have hardened beyond hope, some of them balance on a fine line of possible rehabilitation. Sura is one of these kids, a sensitive, troubled youngster that tries to keep himself and his bunkmate on top of things and out of trouble. This is not easy when kids victimize each other and the administration steals any self respect they may have left.

At night, Sura lies in his bunk staring out the window at a lifeless tree standing stark and barren outside. He must take turns with his bunkmate to stay awake, alert to the possibility of other juvies slipping into his cell to victimize them. Night after night he fights sleep and despair, counting the days and nights until he is out, but drawing plans for an escape. He cries like a little boy, but has to fight like a grown man. It is a situation beyond his years and coping skills, and he lies there on his bunk in the pitch black dark, forever gazing out at the buffalo tree.

When twelve-year-old Sura got caught clipping hoodies, they slapped with a six-month sentence in Hamstock, a juvenile detention center. Most juvenile detention centers keep you until you've reformed. At Hamstock, they keep you until they feel like letting you go.

This book, written in the language of the street, details Sura serving time at the center with his patch mate and best friend Coly Jo, who got sent up for breaking into people's homes to watch them sleep. As Sura somehow breaks through the mire and rises to the top, Coly Jo is beaten down both physically and emotionally. At the end Sura is set free, and has learned to appreciate life at home with his mother, though I doubt he'll be there for long.

An excellent novel, once you learn to decipher the street slang. Not that the slang is bad; it adds to the credibility of the story and I learned lots of new words.

Well, there wasn't really much of a problem I had with this book, I just...couldn't stay interested. Maybe its because I'm a fan of realisticness, but I doubt it. This book was just...boring. Adam Rapp is a great author, which he proved in "The Buffalo Tree," but this one just couldn't do it for me.

If there was on good thing though, it HAD to be Oakley Brownhouse. He was hilarious, imagining him as a little nine year old in the stuff he goes through. Its really quite funny.

I just wish the whole book was as interesting.

The world is well done and detailed, the characters are interesting, but forgive me Mr. Rapp I couldn't find much point or plot to the book! Perhaps a wiser reader could, or perhaps there will be a sequel that'll get more done. I'd certainly buy a sequel.

On a post appocolyptic Earth of the future, ruled by a dictator, eleven-year-old Whensday fights a daily battle for survival. She escapes slave labor in a mine after being rescued by a merchant. Impoverished, he decides to sell her to a childless woman. Whensday things she is being sold back into slavery, so she escapes into the devestated landscape, where acid rain falls daily. She joins up with two other children, but things grow steadily worse, and Whensday ends up being raped, while the friend who tried to save her is put to death. This book is not for the faint of heart, but if you do read it, it gives you a look at a decimated future, and a young girl so determined to survive that she never gives up, in spite of all the horrors she goes through.

Adam Rapp's Little Chicago presents a portrait of an eleven-year-old who lives largely in a world that misuses and neglects him. Blacky Brown, the book's protagonist, is introduced to readers first while running through the woods in the middle of the night, escaping from the house in which he's just been sexually abused. The book's darkness hardly subsides from this point. Blacky experiences neglect from his depressive mother, peer ridicule at school, a substandard living situation at home, and virtually no help from any of the clinicians put in charge of his case. He is passed around, treated poorly, and only able to confide in one person-Mary Jane Paddington, a girl at school who is equally outcast by classmates. Though the relationship that develops between the two of them is one of the only points of hope in the book, it is scarcely developed.

Rapp's style is coarse and bristling, full of short sentences and poignant remarks. But this style is so regimented that it becomes predictable, and often it becomes impossible to ignore the author behind the characters. Many moments of beautiful writing and collage-like images emerge throughout this text, largely because of the sparseness of language. However, the vulgarity of language used by characters, at times, furthers the darkness and rawness of Blacky's experience, but may well pose a problem for younger readers.

Though the book targets readers twelve and up, the substance and language of the text is certainly mature and may be unsuitable for many young readers. This text might be most useful for readers who want a hard-hitting book about the traumas young people sometimes face and are able to sort through the painful and sometimes graphic aspects of the book in order to find its virtues.

Adam Rapp's Little Chicago presents a portrait of an eleven-year-old who lives largely in a world that misuses and neglects him. Blacky Brown, the book's protagonist, is introduced to readers first while running through the woods in the middle of the night, escaping from the house in which he's just been sexually abused. The book's darkness hardly subsides from this point. Blacky experiences neglect from his depressive mother, peer ridicule at school, a substandard living situation at home, and virtually no help from any of the clinicians put in charge of his case. He is passed around, treated poorly, and only able to confide in one person-Mary Jane Paddington, a girl at school who is equally outcast by classmates. Though the relationship that develops between the two of them is one of the only points of hope in the book, it is scarcely developed.

Rapp's style is coarse and bristling, full of short sentences and poignant remarks. But this style is so regimented that it becomes predictable, and often it becomes impossible to ignore the author behind the characters. Many moments of beautiful writing and collage-like images emerge throughout this text, largely because of the sparseness of language. However, the vulgarity of language used by characters, at times, furthers the darkness and rawness of Blacky's experience, but may well pose a problem for younger readers.

Though the book targets readers twelve and up, the substance and language of the text is certainly mature and may be unsuitable for many young readers. This text might be most useful for readers who want a hard-hitting book about the traumas young people sometimes face and are able to sort through the painful and sometimes graphic aspects of the book in order to find its virtues.

On a literary level, this is Kerouac or Burroughs for the young reader. Written in a plain, suggestive, stream of consciousness style, time and events flow over Blacky Brown while he innocently takes note. Beautifully written, haunting, surprisingly hopeful.

On a practical level, the theme, language, and situations are quite mature. The main character is 10, the readership is 12 and up, but I would hesitate to recommend it for readers so young. I wouldn't be surprised to find it in a college freshman English course.