Learning Strategies

Just finished listening to Laura Lippman’s To the Power of Three on audiobook. This post-Columbine mystery presents a school shooting that’s partly predictable but mostly not so, starting with the fact that the shooter is a girl and concluding with several surprises. Setting the event in a large public high school in a exurb of Baltimore, Lippman concentrates mostly on character development and evocation of place. There isn’t a whole lot of plot, and there doesn’t need to be. The descriptions of the community, the high school, and the main characters all ring true. Definitely worth reading — especially for anyone who works with teenagers in upper-middle-class suburban settings.

Labels: books