Module 9/Poetry and Short Stories/July 28-August 3

Crank by Ellen Hopkins

Hopkins, E.  (2004).  Crank.  New York:  Simon and Schuster.  

Summary

This harrowing tale follows the downfall of Kristina Georgia Snow who later becomes Bree.  Kristina visits her absentee father in Reno due to a court order not knowing that he hasn't changed much from the deadbeat dad he used to be.  Kristina meets Adam on her first day there, but after a few boring days she hangs out with Adam at her dad's workplace, the bowling alley.  This is where she tries crank for the first time and after Adam's girlfriend and Kristina's dad walk in, they all do it together.  This begins Kristina's downfall.  The meth creates a persona Kristina says has always been there:  Bree.  Kristina was a straight-A, goodie two shoes junior while Bree is a drug loving, sex loving, bad girl.  Eventually Kristina goes back to her hometown and it takes her mom and stepdad a while to catch on to what is really going on.  Her grades start slipping, she is smoking now, and due to bad choices with another guy who is on crank, she is raped and becomes pregnant.  She falls in love with Chase who is also on crank but he ends up moving away to go to school at USC.  She considers an abortion but once she feels her baby move inside of her she cannot do it.  She has the baby but the monster as she calls it is too strong.  For the most part she stays sober during her pregnancy, but it is not long until she is back on crank full force.  

My Impression

This book was sad and disturbing.  It is very well written and the poetry style makes it a very quick read even though it is well over five hundred pages.  Also, she tends to put the words into shapes according to what the entry is about:  questions marks, the letter T, etc.  I would not read this book again because the content is just so heartbreaking, but it is interesting to see inside the mind of an addict.  The writing is very honest and brutal at times.  It is just so sad to watch a girl with all the promise in the world get sucked into the world of drugs and it all fades away just like that.  There are other parts that are hard to read, like when her friend Robyn tells her of a crank addict who decided to keep her baby and then went on a 3 day binge and the baby cried so much she killed it.  It's just a very heavy subject and not one I would read for enjoyment.  It's just too sad. 

Reviews and Awards

"Hypnotic and jagged free verse wrenchingly chronicles 16-year-old Kristina’s addiction to crank. Kristina’s daring alter ego, Bree, emerges when “gentle clouds of monotony” smother Kristina’s life—when there’s nothing to do and no one to connect with. Visiting her neglectful and druggy father for the first time in years, Bree meets a boy and snorts crank (methamphetamine). The rush is irresistible and she’s hooked, despite a horrible crank-related incident with the boy’s other girlfriend. Back home with her mother, Kristina feels both ignored and smothered, needing more drugs and more boys—in that order. One boy is wonderful and one’s a rapist, but it’s crank holding Bree up at this point. The author’s sharp verse plays with spacing on the page, sometimes providing two alternate readings. In a too brief wrap-up, Kristina keeps her baby (a product of rape) while Hopkins—realistically—offers no real conclusion. Powerful and unsettling. (author’s note) (Fiction. YA)"

(2010, May 20).  [Review of the book Crank].  Kirkus Reviews.  Retrieved from 

      https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ellen-hopkins/crank/.

New York Times' Bestseller

2005 Quills Award Nominee

2005 PSLA Top Ten for Teens

2006 Kentucky Bluegrass Award

2006 Gateway Reader Award Winner

Suggestions for Use

*Have a drug enforcement officer come in as a guest speaker to the library

*Have a former drug addict talk to teenagers about their life before and after