THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS BY MARIEKE NIJKAMP
Bibliographic Info
Author: Marieke Nijkamp
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Copyright: 2016
ISBN: 9781492622468
Summary: What was supposed to be just another normal beginning of the school year for the students of Opportunity High School quickly turned into a nightmare. Right after the principal gives her annual speech welcoming the students into the new semester, the unthinkable happens: the auditorium doors are locked and someone starts shooting. Four students, who all have some type of relationship to the shooter, fight to survive as they struggle to stay alive themselves as well as keep the other students from being killed also. Told from the perspectives of these four brave students, this story gives an up close look at what school shootings really look and feel like in today’s society.
Critical Evaluation: While the story starts off slow, it is overall a very fast paced story. One of the things that makes this story very unique is that it is told from the perspectives of four high school students. While this is such a unique feature of the book, it was very hard to follow the story line at first. I think that having a story told from four different perspectives in a way weakens the story because as a reader I’m constantly flipping between pages to remember who feels what about who and why. Four separate characters was a lot to follow, I’m sure if it was told in a first-person narrative I would easily be able to keep track of everyone way better. One minute one character is in one place at a designated time doing something, and the next few pages there is another character doing something completely different than the other character, talking to other characters, the time isn’t mentioned, and just as soon as you finally get a grasp of the character that you are reading about, it’s time to move on to another character. The characters themselves seemed to be very one dimensional. One thing I did think that the author did well was making the main characters interconnected, that was kind of an interesting twist. There is Tomas, Sylv, Claire, and Autumn: Tomas is Sylvia’s brother, Claire dated Tyler (the shooter), and Autumn is Tyler’s sister. The connection to the characters were established towards the beginning and learning about the character’s relationships with the rest of the main characters was also intriguing. For example, Sylv had a strange encounter with Tyler (in a past event), who felt that Sylv was taking Autumn away from him, and how that situation really scared her especially with him threatening to kill her brother Tomas. The writing style seemed choppy and abrupt to me, but I do understand that it was specifically written this way to make the book unique. And it definitely did.
Reader’s Annotation: After the principal’s annual start of the semester speech, the unthinkable happened: a shooter is right in the auditorium! The fate of the rest of the student body rests upon four students in particular: Autumn, Sylv, Tomas, and Claire, will they be able to save the day?
“This is Where It Ends” is Marieke Nijkamp’s first book; this book turned her into a New York Times Best Selling author. In her very own article featured on the publishers weekly website, Marieke reveals that she loves writing about tragedy, and she naturally tends to gravitate more towards the intense subjects. Particularly she loves working with extremes when writing. Also she loves the concept of trying to find hope in darkness.
The idea for “This is where it Ends” came from Nijkamp having a conversation with a friend after a high profile school shooting. They particularly discussed both high school experiences as well as school safety also. Nijkamp specifically wanted to capture the stories of the students involved with the shooting. By writing from four different perspectives, she felt that she would be able to explore the topic better. Besides having a conversation, Nijkamp has also done extensive research on the subject of shootings including listening to 911 calls, reading investigative reports, and talking to real life victims.
Genre: Realistic fiction
Curriculum Ties: School Safety
Book Talk Ideas: Active shooter training; School safety
Reading level/ Interest Age: Grades 9-12
Challenge Issues and Defense Preparation:
Challenge Issues: School Shootings; Violence
Rationale:
Bibliographic citation:
Author: Marieke Nijkamp
Book Title: This is Where It Ends;
Copyright: 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
ISBN: 9781492622468
Intended Audience: The intended audience is young adults specifically the upper grades of 9-12. This particular book would be beneficial for an English or social studies class. Primarily the book will be used for individual study in which every member of the class should read the book, and then afterwards there can be a group discussion of what transpired in the book as well as observations and thoughts concerning the book. “This is Where It Ends” can be utilized to create talking points for the touchy subject of school shootings as well as active shooter training.
Summary: What was supposed to be just another normal beginning of the school year for the students of Opportunity High School quickly turned into a nightmare. Right after the principal gives her annual speech welcoming the students into the new semester, the unthinkable happens: the auditorium doors are locked and someone starts shooting. Four students, who all have some type of relationship to the shooter, fight to survive as they struggle to stay alive themselves as well as keep the other students from being killed also. Told from the perspectives of these four brave students, this story gives an up close look at what school shootings really look and feel like in today’s society.
Relationship to Program: The relationship of the book to school objectives would be helping 9th graders develop their literal and inferential understanding skills and comprehension skills. Through reading this book they would learn SLE # R.9.9.1 Connect own background knowledge, including personal experience and perspectives shaped by age, gender, class or national origin, to determine author’s purpose. R.9.9.5. Draw inferences from a sentence or a paragraph (including conclusions, generalizations and predictions) and support them with text evidence. Concerning summary and generalization students will utilize R.9.9.8 Summarize and paraphrase structures in informational and literary texts, including relationships among concepts and details. Concerning analysis and evaluation students will utilize R. 9.9.11 Recognize and define various points of view (e.g., omniscient narrator, third person limited) and R. 9.9.13 Identify and discuss a position using concepts gained from reading (e.g. debate, discussion, position paper, etc.).
Impact: Of course, the main impact of the book is that it will open new perspectives to its readers. For those who may not have experienced school shootings, this book can help those students have a better understanding of the experiences of real life victims and survivors. It can also create talking points for guidelines as to how to proceed in that kind of situation as well as introduce active shooter training. For those students who have experienced a school shooting, this book acknowledges that school shootings are in fact real, and gives them something to identify with as a coping mechanism.
Why included: While there are certainly mixed opinions about whether the book is bad or not, this book actually addresses the very real scenario of school shootings. All across the United States, innocent students fall victims to school shootings, these ideas for television episodes have now become our unfortunate reality. It doesn’t matter whether the reader likes the book or not. By reading this book the reader is acknowledging that this is a valid problem in today’s society, and the characters in the story could so easily be either yourself or someone you know. It definitely starts the conversation which could lead to positive resolutions such as an in-depth look at school safety procedures and active shooter training.
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