LS 5623 No Choirboy

Kuklin, Susan. No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row. Henry Holt and Co.: New York, 2008.

ISBN: 0-8050-7950-5

In this brief, six chapter book Susan Kuklin introduces to a casts of characters that are startlingly different. The first three chapters are from the perspectives of young men convicted of horrible crimes (Kuklin either recorded their statements or took notes depending on the prison she visited) and with a fourth segueing into a dialogue of a family of a man put to death by the state of Texas. The last two chapters contain more dialogues: one of a family whose brother was killed and the man is in prison and that of a lawyer who defends the offenders.

It is difficult to know what exactly Kuklin was hoping to accomplish with this book. While the September 2008 issue of School Library Journal call is a “powerful book [that] should be explored and discussed in high schools all across our country,” on one hand, the first person accounts of life in a maximum security prison would give pause to anyone deciding if they wanted to live a life of crime. On the other, Kuklin’s editorial notes and inserts into the dialogue about harsh or neglected upbringings seem to want to make the reader sympathetic to the prisoners in the first few chapters: they were young, they were stupid, and they haven’t lived their life yet. While the last few chapters seem more decisive, there is still room for questioning of the author's motives. The lawyer for two of the offenders in the book, Bryan Stevenson is represented in the last chapter and thanked profusely by Kuklin in the author notes. Sandwiched between the first four chapters and the last, is a dialogue from family members of a teen that died by a violent crime that sounds disturbingly wishy-washy: they want to forgive the offender but he must be punished for his crimes, yet he shouldn’t be put to death . . . While, as a whole, the book serves as a good warning for teens to stay out of trouble, but one can’t help thinking upon finishing it that it is a stealthy anti-death penalty argument. This book can be a frustrating reading experience for those who would want a clear answer on the justifiability of capital punishment, but you won’t find answers here, only more questions.