19 minutes book report

He has had his private email spammed out to an entire school. Lacy, his mother, endures grief, despair, and self-defeating thought patterns. She tries to remember her son for who he was. Lacy would have to be the keeper of those, because it was the only way for that part of Peter to stay alive.

Book Review: Nineteen Minutes

Nineteen Minutes examines a school shooting in a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that asks a haunting question: Do we really ever know someone? Are you an educator looking to use 19 Minutes for an anti-bullying curriculum? Jodi put together these 19 Minutes excerpts and questions as a resource for educators and others developing their own anti-bullying curriculum.

Check out these online resources about school violence and prevention. Enhance your book club meeting : discuss ways to prevent bullying and school violence in your community! In this emotionally charged novel, Jodi Picoult delves beneath the surface of a small town to explore what it means to be different in our society. The publisher: Atria Books , Book In Sterling, New Hampshire, year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates.

His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. Even those who were not inside the school that morning find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex—whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded—must decide whether or not to step down.

Or can she? Rich with psychological and social insight, Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that has at its center a haunting question. Do we ever really know someone? It was listening to their experiences, and my own frustrations, that led me to consider the topic. This book was VERY hard to research. I spoke with them, and they sent me DVDs and material that had never been made available to the public, which helped a bit to get into the mindset of the shooters.

The next contact I made was with a woman who served as a grief counselor to the families who lost children at Columbine. I was actually in Minneapolis, doing a reading, when the Red Lake shootings occurred.

It was the most surreal feeling: there I was in a hotel, writing a scene in the book, and on the TV next to me was a reporter saying exactly what I was typing into my fiction.

I went to the bookstore event that night and was telling folks about the way my two worlds had collided…and a woman came up to me afterward. Through that connection, I not only spoke with two teachers who shared with me their story of the shooting…but also a young man whose friend died that day. It was his commentary that shook me the most — as a writer and a parent — and that became the most important research I did for this book.

Or in other words — these kids who resort to violence are not all that different from the one living upstairs in your own house, most likely — as scary as that is to imagine. Two other facts that surprised me: for many of these shooters, there is the thinnest line between suicide and homicide. They go to the school planning to kill themselves and decide at the last minute to shoot others too.

And that, psychologically, a single act of childhood bullying is as scarring emotionally as a single act of sexual abuse. Historically, one of the most upsetting things I learned was that after Columbine, more than one family was told that their child was the first to be killed.

So I really wanted him to star in another story, where he was front and center. And how long ago was Perfect Match. And Jordan happened to be free…! It does exist! However,I sort of fudged the other equation he devises: that expectation divided by reality equals hope. But in many ways, watching my children as they struggled to find their own place in the social hierarchy of school did make them guinea pigs for me, as I was writing the book.

Discrimination and difference at the high school level will never end until the adults running these schools can go about their own lives without judging others for their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. How ridiculous is it that America prides itself on being a melting pot, when — as Peter says in the novel — that just means it makes everyone the same? The ideas choose me, not the other way around.

And like the moral and ethical complications of MSK, you have a kid in Nineteen Minutes who does something that, on the surface, is absolutely devastating and destructive and will end the lives of others. But — given what these characters have endured — can you blame them? Do I condone school shootings? Absolutely not. Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. And know that even the cool kids, the popular kids, worry that someone will find out their secret: that they worry about fitting in, just like you do.

Inhabited by contradictory, flawed individuals, this intelligent novel draws suspense, moral complexity, and a stunning final twist. On one level, it's a thriller, complete with dismaying carnage, urgent discoveries and 11th-hour revelations, but it also asks serious moral questions about the relationship between the weak and the strong, questions that provide what school people call 'teachable moments. It is less a narrative about a horrific event than an insightful deconstruction of youthful alienation, of the shattering repercussions of bullying, and the disturbing effects of benign neglect.

Her book reminds us of the heartbreak and the loss of innocence. It's also breathtaking storytelling by a best-selling writer At a time when a slew of teen movies make light of social ostracism and social climbing in schools, Picoult's novel is a reminder that too large a dose of anything can be poisonous.

It also makes you want to grab every kid who feels like an outcast and say,. This could be your community, your neighbor, your family. Oprah has been unpredictable with her picks of late, but maybe "Nineteen Minutes" will turn her on to fiction again. In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.

Nineteen minutes is how long it took the Tennessee Titans to sell out of tickets to the playoffs. In nineteen minutes, you can order a pizza and get it delivered. You can read a story to a child or have your oil changed. You can walk two miles.

You can sew a hem. It took thirty-two minutes to drive from her house in Sterling to the Superior Court in Grafton County, NH, and that was only if she speeded through Orford. She twisted her thick copper hair into a knot and anchored it at the base of her neck with bobby pins, transforming herself into the person she needed to be before she left her house. Alex had been a superior court judge now for thirty-four days.

But at forty, she was still the youngest judge in the state. When Alex had submitted her name years ago for the bench, it had been with the sincere desire to make sure people in this legal system were innocent until proven guilty. She just never anticipated that, as a judge, she might not be given the same benefit of the doubt.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee drew Alex into the kitchen. Josie was hunched over a steaming mug at the kitchen table, poring over a textbook. She looked exhausted — her grey eyes were bloodshot; her chestnut hair was a knotty ponytail. Alex poured herself a cup of coffee and slid into the chair across from her. A girl who was destined for great things. A young woman who was exactly what Alex had hoped her daughter would grow to become.

Josie had once been so proud to have a mother as a judge. Alex could remember Josie broadcasting her career to the tellers at the bank; the baggers in the grocery store; the flight attendants on planes. That had all changed three years ago, when Josie entered high school, and the tunnel of communication between them bricked slowly shut.

As a mother, you spent years leading your child, teaching her by example how to function on her own with confidence and integrity. So why, then, was it such a surprise to realize that you were no longer tugging her weight behind you, but watching her move along a parallel track?

Have you had breakfast? Alex weighed the costs of being even five minutes later, or getting another black mark against her in the cosmic good parenting tally. Her husband had her committed when she put a pound of bacon in the blender and chased him around the kitchen with a knife, yelling Bam! Josie stood up and leaned against the counter, watching her mother cook.

She tilted her head to one side. Alex glanced down at her skirt, blouse, and heels and frowned. Is it too Margaret Thatcher?

No one knows what you have on under your robe. You could wear, like, pajama pants. But there were miles to drive and defendants to arraign and chemical equations to interpret, and by the time Alex set a plate of food in front of Josie, the moment had winged away. By the time she backed her car out of the garage, her head was already focused on the decision she had to write that afternoon; the number of arraignments the clerk would have stuffed onto her docket; the motions that would fallen like shadows across her desk between Friday afternoon and this morning.

She was caught up in a world far away from home, where at that very moment her daughter stood up and scraped her breakfast plate into the trash can without ever taking a single bite.

Patrick DuCharme, the sole detective on the Sterling Police force, sat on a bench on the far side of the locker room, listening to the patrol officers on the morning shift pick on a rookie with a little extra padding around the middle.

As the rest of the guys laughed, Patrick took pity on the kid. Over the course of the weekend, Patrick had played approximately ten thousand games of Candyland, had given countless piggy-back rides, had his hair done, and — here was his cardinal mistake — allowed Tara to put bright pink nailpolish on his toes, which Patrick had forgotten to remove.

He glanced down at his feet, and curled his toes under. Patrick yanked his dress socks on, slipped into his loafers, and walked out, still holding his tie. One, he counted. Two, three. On cue, laughter spilled out of the locker room, following him down the hallway. In his office, Patrick closed the door and peered at himself in the tiny mirror on the back.

His black hair was still damp from his shower; his face was flushed from his run.

The mass shooting takes place at Sterling High, in New Hampshire, and lasts for the nineteen minutes of the book's titular namesake. Peter Houghton, the. So writes Jodi Picoult in the acknowledgments section of Nineteen Minutes, a novel that thoroughly dissects a school shooting. In the book.

The book begins with several students going about their day at high school. Patrick the detective is in his squad car when the call comes over the radio that there were shots fired at the high school. He finds his way to the locker room where Peter is sitting in one corner with a gun in his hand. He was unable to commit suicide because the gun jammed.

Answer: The other nine million will be recapitulated by Ms.

Recently, Clara and I read both read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, and since it was so terribly thought-provoking, we simply had to blog on it! Now, usually when we do this type of discussion post, we both end up getting sidetracked and going off on these random tangents, and nothing really gets discussed. So, you know, 10 points to us.

After the Shooting Is Over

Nineteen Minutes examines a school shooting in a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that asks a haunting question: Do we really ever know someone? Are you an educator looking to use 19 Minutes for an anti-bullying curriculum? Jodi put together these 19 Minutes excerpts and questions as a resource for educators and others developing their own anti-bullying curriculum. Check out these online resources about school violence and prevention. Enhance your book club meeting : discuss ways to prevent bullying and school violence in your community!

Nineteen Minutes - Book Club Classics!

Sign up for our newsletters! In this emotionally charged novel, Jodi Picoult delves beneath the surface of a small town to explore what it means to be different in our society. In Sterling, New Hampshire, seventeen-year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of his classmates. His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling's residents. Even those who were not inside the school that morning find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex -- whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded -- must decide whether or not to step down. She's torn between presiding over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter.

Nineteen Minutes deals with the desire to fit in and the hardships of being on the outside of the circle.

Jminick-Book Recommendations. Search this site. Van Dunk. Title: Nineteen Minutes.

Reading Group Guide

For complaints, use another form. Study lib. Upload document Create flashcards. Documents Last activity. Flashcards Last activity. Add to Add to collection s Add to saved. I promise that any suggestions will be used to strengthen future questions, and I would love to use any positive quotes on my web site. Again, thank you for your support and feel free to order more questions in the future!! Sincerely, Kristen Galles Book Club Classics 3 Nineteen Minutes — Discussion Questions The following questions approach the novel from a number of different angles -- including how the novel functions as a work of art, how it addresses fundamental questions of humanity, and how it engages the reader. On the other hand, I recommend starting with a few accessible questions and asking every member to respond to ensure that all voices are present and heard from the beginning.

Jodi Picoult

My interest in the topic of school shootings was piqued after doing research for the previous two posts, and I wondered about ordering books based on Columbine and its ilk from the library. I stole it from her like a thief in the night and dived right in. Hannibal Lecter was based on a guy Thomas Harris met on the wrong side of a set of bars in a Mexican prison. I was looking forward to seeing which Columbine shooter Ms. Picoult had gracelessly shoehorned into her work for personal profit.