The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio
Dashka Slater wrote The 57 Bus for teenagers, but her audience should also include parents…Slater doesn't apologize for Richard; she just asks us to consider where he came from and to question the ingrained prejudice of a legal system that eventually locked him up for five years.
Publishers Weekly
★ 08/14/2017
Journalist and author Slater (Escargot) offers a riveting account of the events that preceded and followed a 2013 assault in Oakland, Calif. Both Sasha (a white, agender private school teenager) and Richard (an African-American public school student who had lost numerous loved ones to murder) rode the 57 bus every day. One afternoon, Richard—egged on by friends—lit the sleeping Sasha’s skirt on fire, and the resulting blaze left third-degree burns over 22% of Sasha’s body. Sixteen-year-old Richard was arrested and charged as an adult with committing a hate crime. The short, easily digestible chapters take a variety of forms, including narrative, poetry, lists (including terms for gender, sex, sexuality, and romantic inclinations), text-message conversations, and Richard’s heartrending letters of apology to Sasha. Using details gleaned from interviews, social media, surveillance video, public records, and other sources, Slater skillfully conveys the complexities of both young people’s lives and the courage and compassion of their families, friends, and advocates, while exploring the challenges and moral ambiguities of the criminal justice system. This painful story illuminates, cautions, and inspires. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
A New York Time Bestseller
Stonewall Book Award—Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children's & Young Adult Literature Award Winner
YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Nonfiction Honor Book
A TIME Magazine Best YA Book of All Time
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
A TAYSHAS Reading List Selection
School Library Journal Best LGBTQIA+ Book
A Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List Selection
An Illinois Teen Readers' Choice Award Nominee
A James Cook Honor Book for Diversity in Teen Literature
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
A New York Public Library Top Ten Book for Teens
California Library Association's Beatty Award Winner
An ILA Notable Book for a Global Society
An OLA Sequoyah Book Award Winner
A Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award Nominee
A Florida Teens Read Book List Selection
Green Mountain Book Award Winner
A Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominee
"A sensitive study of an incident wrapped up in so many modern conundrums." —The Financial Times
★ "The text shifts from straightforward reporting to lyrical meditations, never veering into oversentimentality or simple platitudes. Readers are bound to come away with deep empathy for both Sasha and Richard. VERDICT Slater artfully unfolds a complex and layered tale about two teens whose lives intersect with painful consequences." —School Library Journal, starred review
★ "With a journalist's eye for overlooked details, Slater does a masterful job debunking the myths of the hate-crime monster and the African-American thug, probing the line between adolescent stupidity and irredeemable depravity. Few readers will traverse this exploration of gender identity, adolescent crime, and penal racism without having a few assumptions challenged. An outstanding book that links the diversity of creed and the impact of impulsive actions to themes of tolerance and forgiveness." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ "Using details gleaned from interviews, social media, surveillance video, public records, and other sources, Slater skillfully conveys the complexities of both young people’s lives and the courage and compassion of their families, friends, and advocates, while exploring the challenges and moral ambiguities of the criminal justice system. This painful story illuminates, cautions, and inspires." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ "[A] multi-layered lesson on the healing power of humanity." —Shelf Awareness, starred review
"It is likely that this account will spark conversations, debates, and contemplation, perhaps leading readers to define for themselves what justice means." —VOYA
"A powerful story of class and race (Sasha is white), gender and identity, justice and mercy, love and hate. Slater has crafted a compelling true-crime story with ramifications for our most vulnerable youth." —The Horn Book
“This book challenged my views and it started a conversation in my house that I thought I’d never have. We all changed, at least in my house, because of this book.” —Kate Terbush, Burbank Leader
"Slater approaches both students’ perspectives with nuance and complexity, and while there are no easy answers in this narrative, her compassionate writing shows that there’s often more to the story than we see." —TIME Magazine
“A thought-provoking tale of class, race, gender, morality and forgiveness . . . ‘The 57 Bus’ will leave you with a hole in your heart and tears running down your cheeks. For a book about a horrible crime, the amount of love is remarkable.” —The Daily Californian
School Library Journal
★ 07/01/2017
Gr 6 Up—On November 4, 2013, Sasha, a high school senior from Oakland, CA, was napping on the 57 bus home from school. Shortly thereafter, Richard, another Oakland teen, boarded the bus with his two friends. When the trio's jokes took a dark turn, Richard's and Sasha's lives were forever changed. Slater, who originally covered the crime for the New York Times magazine, here breaks down the series of events into short and effective chapters, divided into four parts: "Sasha," "Richard," "The Fire," and "Justice." By investigating the lives of these two teens, their backgrounds, their friends and families, and the circumstances that led to that fateful day on the bus, Slater offers readers a grounded and balanced view of a horrific event. There is much baked into the story of these intersecting lives that defies easy categorization, including explorations of gender identity, the racial and class divisions that separate two Oakland neighborhoods, the faults and limits of the justice system, the concept of restorative justice, and the breadth of human cruelty, guilt, and forgiveness. With clarity and a journalist's sharp eye for crucial details, Slater explains preferred pronouns; the difference between gender and sex as well as sexuality and romance; and the intricacies of California's criminal justice process. The text shifts from straightforward reporting to lyrical meditations, never veering into oversentimentality or simple platitudes. Readers are bound to come away with deep empathy for both Sasha and Richard. VERDICT Slater artfully unfolds a complex and layered tale about two teens whose lives intersect with painful consequences. This work will spark discussions about identity, community, and what it means to achieve justice.—Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-07-17
In the fall of 2013, on a bus ride home, a young man sets another student on fire.In a small private high school, Sasha, a white teen with Asperger's, enjoyed "a tight circle of friends," "blazed through calculus, linguistics, physics, and computer programming," and invented languages. Sasha didn't fall into a neat gender category and considered "the place in-between…a real place." Encouraged by parents who supported self-expression, Sasha began to use the pronoun they. They wore a skirt for the first time during their school's annual cross-dressing day and began to identify as genderqueer. On the other side of Oakland, California, Richard, a black teen, was "always goofing around" at a high school where roughly one-third of the students failed to graduate. Within a few short years, his closest friends would be pregnant, in jail, or shot dead, but Richard tried to stay out of real trouble. One fateful day, Sasha was asleep in a "gauzy white skirt" on the 57 bus when a rowdy friend handed Richard a lighter. With a journalist's eye for overlooked details, Slater does a masterful job debunking the myths of the hate-crime monster and the African-American thug, probing the line between adolescent stupidity and irredeemable depravity. Few readers will traverse this exploration of gender identity, adolescent crime, and penal racism without having a few assumptions challenged. An outstanding book that links the diversity of creed and the impact of impulsive actions to themes of tolerance and forgiveness. (Nonfiction. 14-18)
