Parkland Speaks: Survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas Share Their Stories

by Sarah Lerner (Editor)

Overview

Featuring art and writing from the students of the Parkland tragedy, this is a raw look at the events of February 14, and a poignant representation of grief, healing, and hope.

The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School share their emotional journeys that began on February 14, 2018, and continue today. This revealing and unfiltered look at teens living in the wake of tragedy is a poignant representation of grief, anger, determination, healing, and hope.

The intimate collection includes poetry, eyewitness accounts, letters, speeches, journal entries, drawings, and photographs from the events of February 14 and its aftermath. Full of heartbreaking loss, a rally cry for change, and hope for a safe future, these artistic pieces will inspire readers to reflect on their own lives and the importance of valuing and protecting the ones you love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984849991
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	01/22/2019
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

SARAH LERNER is an English teacher, Journalism teacher, and yearbook adviser at MSD in Parkland, Florida. She began teaching in 2002 and was named the Sun-Sentinel High School Journalism Teacher of the Year in 2014. Sarah lives in Florida with her husband and two children.

Editorial Reviews

"A valuable primary source document that will be of interest to students and activists today and historians tomorrow." —Kirkus

"Poignant and hard-hitting." —PW

"This is an intense, hard, and very direct window into the experience of surviving a mass shooting." —SLJ

"This collection of experiences, memories, and flashbacks . . . offers teens a place to process the national tragedy, and the world a window into how the school itself is coping and healing." —Booklist

From the Publisher

2018-10-15

A compilation of firsthand witness and survivor accounts of the Feb. 14, 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that took 17 lives and ignited the March for Our Lives.

Remembering the victims, processing the trauma, sharing their anger, and advocating for lasting change, 43 survivors of the shooting submitted creative work to editor Lerner, an English and journalism teacher and yearbook adviser at MSD. The result is another kind of yearbook, capturing in words and full-color images the terror of the day and the aftermath of grief, loss, hope, and political action. Lerner selected the pieces, which include poems, essays, a letter, a journal entry, speeches, photographs, and original art. While some of the works are not especially polished and overall the contributions vary in artfulness, all are heartfelt. As a whole, the collection makes clear what it was like to hear the gunshots and the victims' screams, to hide in closets and classrooms, to text frantically to reach friends and family, and later to cope with the return to school, nightmares, and survivor guilt—becoming galvanized into political action.

A valuable primary source document that will be of interest to students and activists today and historians tomorrow. (resources, contributor biographies) (Nonfiction. 12-adult)

Kirkus Reviews