The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Outsiders
Book Review: A Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
I remember my 7th grade English teacher handing me this book for the first time for an assignment. we were instructed to go home and read chapter one. I finished the entire book in one sitting.
This book is a powerful story about prejudice and rivalry, and a young boy realizing that pain, no matter your class or friends, is the same for all of us.
I have a 13 year old son now, and I can't wait for my copy so he can enjoy the experience as much as I did.
Book Review: A Classic for Teens!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Outsiders is a great book which deals with important issues: poverty, death, and gangs. Ponyboy Curtis is a 'greaser' (someone who is poor and lives on the east side of town) and is constantly at war with the soc's (the rich people who live on the west side of town). Ponyboy lives with his two older brothers, Darry and Soda, and they watch out for little Ponyboy. The only other people Ponyboy can count on, are his gang/buddies. One night Ponyboy and Johnny commit murder and leave the town and go into the country. From this point in the book on, tragedy happens to people all around Ponyboy.The Outsiders shows the difficulties one can go through when someone a person loves dies. The book also shows the hardships people who live in poverty and bad neighborhoods can go through.
I recommend this book to all teenagers. There are many points in the book where I could not put the book down. If you are looking for a book full of suspense and action, then The Outsiders is for you!
HAPPY READING!
Book Review: A Disappointed Teacher's Review
Summary: 1 Stars
It excites me that so many students have found this book so enticing and satisfying as a reading experience, but my excitement has everything to do with the act of reading, and not this specific book. I'm glad a book turned them on this much, but I hope they move on to better books, less insulting ones, and I hope other teachers feel this way, too. Look at some of the low reviews--by both kids and adults, and you'll see that there's a great deal of divided opinion, and not just because the book was the dreaded "assigned reading".
The Outsiders is an absurdly weak novel. It is almost artless in its prose, and yet Hinton doesn't supply us with persuasive grittiness in its place. The tough scenes are tough because the book wants them be so, and because the facts of death and guilt have impact on us--but not because Hinton successfully locates the real, grinding forcve of these happenings. So we have a book that just lacks expressive force, making it at most a series of sometimes engaging incidents. The characters and dialogue are problems, too. Hinton's teeage kids alternately fail to see some of the most manifest, obvious meanings behind some circumstance and then fill a whole page with insight after insight about each other and the discriminatory society they inhabit. Near the end, in the course of a couple pages, we get a whirlwind of family revelations as Ponyboy understands something about Darry because of a little shouting match and then Darry and Ponyboy realize something about Sodapop's family anxieties. The rush of these sudden epiphanies makes them hasty and unconvincing, and the fact that Hinton was a teenager when she wrote it is a problem, not a justification.
It isn't even clear that the book has compassion for its own characters. In the flashback that tells of Johnny's bad mauling by Soc kids, the other greasers show up (they always seem to know where to find each other immediately after something awful has happened) and they just sit around listening. So Johnny's supposedly gut-wrenching pain becomes merely a cause for character conversation, and that flashback just leaves him there bleeding, in the company of friends. He is the novels' maudlin spectacle. Frankly, Dally is dangerous because the book keeps saying so, not because the book really demonstrates or illustraes a dangerous quality in him. Many of the characters are just indistinguishable guys with unrevealing dialogue or action; they lack definable individuality.
The theme of being judged by appearances has been done better in almost every work of fiction I have ever encountered. Heck, I read my own children a funny, spirited picture book called "I Stink," about a garbage truck, and that offers the topic more useful examination than this does. The unremitting suffering and misuderstanding and misdirection these charcaters undergo in Hinton's novel is more punishing and melodramatiuc than revealing. The book is simply substandard reading that satisfies the way a bad summer movie does, and it cares about that much for its characters and is about as insulting to its readers.
Book Review: A GREAT BOOK FOR ALL AND I LOVED IT
Summary: 5 Stars
THIS BOOK IS A GREAT BOOK FOR ANYONE WHO CAN READ IT BECAUSE IT EXPRESSES GOOD MORALS IN AN INTERESTING AND MIND GRIPPING WAY. I REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK AND WOULD RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ANYONE WHO ENJOYS READING ABOUT REAL LIFE EVENTS.Book Review: A Good Realistic book
Summary: 4 Stars
The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton is about a boy named Ponyboy who is 14 years old and who is involved in the world of high school gangs. Ponyboy is the narrator of this story about friendship and loyalty. Although Ponyboy acts like he's tough, he is thoughtful.The story is set in the 1960's in a small American town. Ponyboy is part of are the "Greasers" in the poor side of town who consider themselves a `family', and their enemies are the "Socs" (short for "socials") who are on the rich side of town.
When Ponyboy and his friend Johnny meet a Soc girl, it caused a fight with a Soc that results in Johnny murdering a Soc. Ponyboy and Johnny go on the run from the law, and become heroes when they save children from a burning church, proving that they are not so bad.
Johnny gets caught in the fire and dies, and since Johnny was his only friend, Dally, another, greaser, intentionally gets shot by the police while holding up a store. Ponyboy gets very depressed, but he takes the advice of his teacher and decides he has to get on with his life and writes a book about his experiences.
In this novel, the author writes about kids who do not have parents to guide them, and about the things that can happen to them. The author tries to make the story as realistic as possible.
The Outsiders is a good book for kids between the ages of 11 to 18. Readers should be aware that there is violence in this book. I really enjoyed this story because it was realistic and dramatic.