The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is timeless. There was never a year when I taught 8th Grade language arts that I didn't have at least a handful of students claim it as their new favorite book.
It's powerful because it was written by a teen. It's powerful because every teen connects to an "us" and "them" feeling.
It includes tons of 50s slang, but even still, it remains approachable. During class discussions, I was shocked to heaer how strong some of these inklings were to 13 year-olds.
In the book, Sherri "Cherry" Valance becomes a confidant of Ponyboy's, someone other than his closest older brother SodaPop he can talk to.
Cherry comes to realize that although she and Ponyboy are from different posses, he the Greasers and she the Soc's, there really isn't much difference between them. Ponyboy reflects, “it seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset.”
The more we get to know one another, the more we realize this. Have you seen this viral video yet? Hard world. Small world.
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