The Wave
Todd Strasser
Amazon Summary:
This novel dramatizes an incident that took place in a California school in 1969. A teacher creates an experimental movement in his class to help students understand how people could have followed Hitler. The results are astounding. The highly disciplined group, modeled on the principles of the Hilter Youth, has its own salute, chants, and special ways of acting as a unit and sweeps beyond the class and throughout the school, evolving into a society willing to give up freedom for regimentation and blind obedience to their leader. All will learn a lesson that will never be forgotten.
My Review:
9.5/10
Let us get back into this. The reasons I read this book AGAIN are quite a lot. Firstly I read this book in 6th or 7th grade, and really enjoying it. The next reason is my drama teacher, who is wonderful, is putting on an adaptation of this novel as our spring show. Auditions were coming up, so I figured I would re-read the book. I got cast as the dad, Mr. Saunders. I fell in love with it all over again. And sidebar: seeing all my old annotations was adorable. Now let me talk about the book.
Since there was only one thing about this book I wasn't a huge fan of, I figured I would start with it. And this criticism is good actually . I wish this book was longer. It was too short for me and I wanted more. Now let's move on to the other topics of discussion.
Before I start, I wanted to give a warning that this book is a book that deals with serious topics that children and teens face regularly, bullying and peer pressure. This whole book is about a classroom experiment that gets taken too far, and results in kids getting bullied and pressured to join The Wave.
Another reason I chose to re-read this book was that there is not a dull moment in the story. Page one of the book starts the story and it stays intense throughout the novel. It makes you scared because this actually happened, and as the saying goes "history is doomed to repeat itself if you don't learn from the past." This was one of those books that moved me and made me rethink about how bullying affects everyone.
In conclusion, this book is one every high school student should read. It is serious and will make anyone who has pressured or bullied someone, rethink their decision. If you like these shows... well there really is no television show or movie quite like this novel. (Except the movie, which I refuse to see)
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