Crank in the Classroom- Malik Floyd

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“Crank” by Ellen Hopkins is a very different book considering it to be a YA read. We would not relate most YA reads to being a book about a teenager addicted to meth because that is something that we rarely do not hear about a lot involving adolescents. Though the main character Kristina is battling her addiction to the monster it also illustrates what effects any addiction to drugs can have on a person especially a teenager. I think that she suffers severely from her father’s presents and the meth is the way she copes with him not being there for her and also her mother.


This novel is very creative in many ways. Hopkins wrote the novel in verse which make it very easy for an adolescent to read. Once they take a look at the actual book before cracking it open it may turn them away because of the number of pages but once they start to read the poetry it goes pretty quickly. The only downfall is that sometimes it may be harder for the reader to keep up with how the poem reads, that is one of the problems I faced. Like we discussed in class I think that this would be a novel that would be a little on edge to teach being how graphic it includes things such as drugs and sex. As teachers I think the best thing to if we wanted to use this book would be to possibly use an excerpt or a specific poem to focus on from the text. Overall I think that crank is a great book because a lot of teens deal with drug addictions every day. Though it may not be meth drug addiction is very prevalent in today’s adolescents, and I think a good bit of students could relate to Kristina.  

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 9, 2016 at 8:00 PM

    I agree, I think this would be a great book to teach in the classroom.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownNovember 9, 2016 at 9:03 PM

    I think also even if students are not experiencing drugs themselves at adolescent age most likely they are at least curious and this book kind of gives them a super scary dose of reality from someone other than strict parental figure. Plus, many students might have addicts in the family and this might help them sympathize or humanize the person in question.

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