Forty-Nine Minutes of Madness

December 1, 2012

Gr 5-8-While the events introduced here happened in the recent past and may be fresh on the minds of adults, younger readers will appreciate the complete coverage in these books, originally published at least 10 years ago. The quality of these short titles is good, and the informational texts are written in a way that lend themselves to a cover-to-cover read. Columbine and Oklahoma City also give context to these devastating incidents, describing events before, during, and after the disasters and related actions in the intervening years. Although the pictures and images are stock photos, they are captioned and adequately show the range of devastation and destruction to the affected people and geographic regions. The final chapters and back matter have been updated to aid in the understanding of these events. Columbine does contain an image of the shooters in the cafeteria as well as information about the bombs they made and details of the students and teacher who were killed that day, so it might not be the best choice for some collections.-Nancy Jo Lambert, Ruth Borchardt Elementary, Plano, TX

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2012
Grades 5-8 In this updated replacement for her 2002 Columbine High School Shooting, Hasday offers a moment-by-moment chronicle of the massacre. This also looks at the Littleton, Colorado, community and the families of the two killers and provides accounts of the immediate aftermath, the official investigation, and subsequent events, including the unveiling of the Columbine Memorial in 2007. Along with blurry security-camera footage and murky color photos of grieving students, the illustrations include a few post-2002 images, such as a page from one of the killers' daybooks. The writing won't win any prizes, and next to the cogent analyses in Diane Marczely Gimpel's The Columbine Shootings (2012), the author's attempts to illuminate the mass murderers' psychology are superficialstill, this entry in the Disasters: People in Peril series makes a serviceable source of information about the tragedy for less able readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)