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Overview

School has become a prison.
No one knows why.
There's no way to stop it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060080839
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/11/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.12(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	770L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised 1974: A Person History, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

April 1, 1947

Place of Birth:

Brooklyn, New York

Education:

B.A., Radcliffe College, 1968

Reading Group Guide

After
by Francine Prose

In her first novel for young readers, Francine Prose chronicles what happens when protection goes too far and what it means to have freedom eliminated in the name of safety.

The discussion topics in this reading group guide are intended to spark conversations and ideas about the issues raised in this poignant and provoking book.

About the Author:

Francine Prose is the author of eleven highly acclaimed works of fiction, including the National Book Award Finalist BLUE ANGEL. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and The Paris Review; she is a contributing editor at Harper's, and she writes regularly on art for the Wall Street Journal. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, Francine Prose is a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in New York City.

About the Book:

The shootings at Pleasant Valley were fifty miles away, but at Central High a grief and crisis counselor is hired, security is increased, and privileges are being taken away. If you break the new rules, the punishment is severe. And the rules keep changing every day. It's for the protection of the students, yet fifteen-year-old Tom Bishop learns that things are far more sinister than they seem. Students and teachers begin disappearing and, with few people aware of the danger lurking, Tom and his friends must make a decision that will change their lives forever.

Questions for Discussion:

How do you thinkthat the subject of this book -- the line between sacrificing personal freedoms and protecting people -- can apply to what is happening in the world today?
Nearly all adult characters in the book, teachers included, are reluctant to stand up to Dr. Wilner. Why do you think that is? Can you think of other times in history when people have been reluctant to confront authority?
In light of the changes at Central and his mother's death, in what way is it significant that Tom eats his donut at the fair "in the tiniest pieces, crumb by crumb, and not waste one grain of sugar or on speck of cinnamon"?
Tom, Silas, Avery, and Brian bring up Invasion of the Body Snatchers several times in the book. It's their favorite movie and on the day before Silas leaves for Operation Turnaround, the four boys watch it. How does this movie foreshadow what's to happen by the end of the book?
After Silas is sent to Operation Turnaround, Tom remarks, "Right after that the weather changed. It was if Silas's absence made everything go cold and gray, as if his not being there caused the snow to start falling." How did the author use these few descriptive sentences to foreshadow what was to come for Tom and his friends?
Dr. Wilner calls Tom into his office because during a random locker search Tom was found to be holding "questionable materials" in his locker -- a copy of Catcher in the Rye and a CD by the Tuff Knox Girls. How is the dialogue between Tom and Dr. Wilner regarding these items a turning point in the book?
After Becca reveals to Tom that she was behind the graffiti incidents in school, Tom says he wasn't sure how he felt about knowing that Becca committed a crime he wouldn't have had the courage to commit. What does this comment reveal about his character and how can this relate back to his mother's death when he was younger?
Chronicling the beginning of the book to the end, how are the students treated throughout? What kinds of rights do young people have today? Do you think some of our methods of "protecting" teens, such as random drug tests, mandatory school uniforms, etc., impinge on personal freedoms?
During an assembly, Dr. Wilner praises the success of Jerry Gargiulo, who had been sent to Operation Turnaround a couple of months before. None of the other students seemed to know who he was, and they infer he was sent there because he was an "outsider," a profile assigned to the killers at Pleasant Valley. Do you think it is right or wrong to profile kids in terms of characteristics; does this perpetuate stereotypes?

Also by Francine Prose:

Blue Angel
Guided Tours of Hell
Household Saints
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
Primitive People

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Blue Angel novelist Francine Prose speaks to younger audiences in this unsettling drama about one high school's experiences following a shooting at a neighboring school.
When nearby Pleasant Valley experiences fatal gun violence, Tom Bishop and the other Central High students endure a startling transformation in the name of "safety." With a newly hired guidance counselor -- a frosty Dr. Willard -- aboard, the school installs metal detectors, searches bags, and tests students for drugs, even outlawing the color red because of its gang associations. Students and staff feel jittery about the new procedures, but when parents start acting like "robots" (due to brainwashing emails from the school) and "troubled" kids begin disappearing into "rehabilitation" camps, things are clearly out of control. Thankfully, Tom's parents haven't been reading the emails, and the Bishops wind up hightailing it away from Central for good.
A novel that explores the relation between safety and paranoia -- extending it to a chilling conclusion -- After leaves readers with thought-provoking aftershocks. Prose's overarching message about where privacy and freedom begins and ends is timely, while Tom's confused voice is the perfect narration. A useful springboard for talks about a tough issue. Matt Warner

bn.com

A disturbing foray into a contemporary America where protection and safety have become labels for repression and murder. In the wake of a killing spree at a school 50 miles away, rules begin to change at Central High. Supposed grief counselor Dr. Willner replaces the old principal, and immediately backpacks are searched, books banned, and clothing regulated. The color red is strictly forbidden (because the killers at the other school wore it), and when one girl refuses to remove the red ribbon she wears in memory of her deceased brother, she is sent away from school-and never returns. Other students and one teacher also disappear as Dr. Willner becomes ever more sinister. "Bus TV," broadcast during the ride to school, shows revisionist history. Parents neglect to protest even their own children's disappearances, seemingly because they have been brainwashed by incessant e-mails from the school administration. Across the country, detention camps have been set up where entire groups of teenagers are sent and possibly murdered. Ongoing references to Stalinist Russia and to the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers supply metaphors for the unrecognizably evil and passive adults. The end offers no hint of what will happen next as the remaining main characters flee the town in fear for their lives. Because the narrative is kept faithfully inside the protagonist's mind, readers are skillfully left just as unsettled, frightened, and confused as he is himself, about both the future and the nature of what exactly is going on. Could have been even scarier if the administrative power had snowballed rather than possessing total control from the beginning, but still an unsettling piece for modern times.(Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews