Rule of the Bone

Again, I find myself posting about a novel that I wouldn't ever teach. I actually might teach this book to a certain group of kids. This may sound horrible, but I think it would be better received at an alternative school than a mainstream one because of its content. It is about a teenager, Chappy, who leaves his home in order to escape a sexually abusive step father and an emotionally absent mother. He takes on a deviant behavior and the name Bone to match his new destructive personality. Bone becomes addicted to drugs, ends up staying with a gang, at a mall, with a pedophile, and finally, in Jamaica with a pot-dealing Rastafarian who teaches him his ways.

This is a coming of age story much like Perks, and Catcher in the Rye. It could easily be taught alongside those novels, but it does seems a bit more mature in its content, which is always something I consider as a future teacher. Its biggest success is the voice of Bone. He is an enjoyable narrator to read and he offers such a strong presence that I found myself soaring through 400 pages just to keep hearing his story. I haven't found such a strong example of voice in a while and I would definitely use at least excerpts from this novel to teach that literary concept. I may even frame it as the mentor text to a lesson on voice in a writer's workshop setting.

I really think that the content is not worth throwing out the book for students. So many kids would love reading it that I would have a hard time censoring their choice to. Yes, it does deal with abuse, drugs, sex, and violence, but so do teenagers on a day to day basis, and this is just too good a book to deny them the pleasure of reading it. I am such a sucker for the coming of age novel that I was pleased to find another recent "version" of Catcher in the Rye. I believe students would relate to Bone and find his story compelling. I definitely recommend this novel to anyone who liked Perks enough to read a much more extensive, intense story of a teenage boy discovering life.