Thursday, August 7, 2008

Passion Plea-Nonfiction-Go Ask Alice


I am writing this plea for others to vote AGAINST Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous. I know that many people have read this novel and will be voting on it during the final vote, and I hope you will vote No.


There are many reasons I feel this book does not deserve a Printz award. First of all, as many people know, it has been rumored that this novel is not true, and there is speculation that it was written as a form of propoganda to keep teens away from drugs. Having said this, I will argue that the characters are not very believable. The writer of the novel/diary is a 15 year old girl who falls into an addiction to many types of drugs and lives on the streets. Yet she still makes journal entries when she is living on the streets and sleeping on benches?? I find it hard to beleive that she writes her entries on napkins, newspaper and keeps them all in order and puts them back in her diary when she gets home. I also found her vocabulary to be a little advanced for the teen reader, and she still has a great vocabulary and writing style when she is high and doesn't know what's going on.


Her story is touching, but I never really believed in what she was writing, and it took my attention away from getting out of it what I should have. It does the job of scaring me from ever doing drugs, but I felt the story was a little confusing, especially at the end. I found the whole novel being a horror story thought up by a group of parents that wanted to keep their kids on the straight and narrow. I am not sure it adheres to it's genre of being nonfiction.

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