Module 14 - Crank

Summary 
When Kristina goes to visit her father in Reno during summer vacation, she discovers her inner wild child “Bree”.  While visiting her dad Kristina tries crank.  She wakes up “the monster”.  The monster drives her to getting raped, going to jail, dealing crank, and getting pregnant. Her addiction to crank is all she can think about.  It is the pregnancy that finally provides Kristina with the strength to keep the monster at bay.

Impressions

I started this book in audio version because I had a hard time finding it at the library.  The style, written in verse, took a little while to get used to.  Eventually I found the book at a book store.  The arrangement of the words was creative and you can tell the author thought about the word placement.  There is a lot of emotion and intensity in the story.  I would recommend this for an older young adult reader.

Reviews

Gr. 8-12. Like the teenage crack user in the film Traffic, the young addict in this wrenching, cautionary debut lives in a comfortable, advantaged home with caring parents. Sixteen-year-old Kristina first tries crank, or crystal meth, while visiting her long-estranged father, a crank junkie. Bree is Kristina's imagined, bolder self, who flirts outrageously and gets high without remorse, and when Kristina returns to her mother and family in Reno, it's Bree who makes connections with edgy guys and other crank users that escalate into full-blown addiction and heartrending consequences. Hopkins tells Kristina's story in experimental verse. A few overreaching lines seem out of step with character voices: a boyfriend, for example, tells Kristina that he'd like to wait for sex until she is "free from dreams of yesterday." But Hopkins uses the spare, fragmented style to powerful effect, heightening the emotional impact of dialogues, inner monologues, and devastating scenes, including a brutal date rape. Readers won't soon forget smart, sardonic Kristina; her chilling descent into addiction; or the author's note, which references her own daughter's struggle with "the monster." -Gillian Engberg

Engberg, G. (2004). Crank. The Booklist, 101(6), 595-595. Retrieved from     
     http://search.proquest.com/docview/235583645?accountid=7113

Gr 8 Up-Seventeen-year-old Kristina Snow is introduced to crank on a trip to visit her wayward father. Caught up in a fast-paced, frightening, and unfamiliar world, she morphs into "Bree" after she "shakes hands with the monster." Her fearless, risk-taking alter ego grows stronger, "convincing me to be someone I never dreamed I'd want to he." When Kristina goes home, things don't return to normal. Although she tries to reconnect with her mother and her former life as a good student, her drug use soon takes over, leaving her "starving for speed" and for boys who will soon leave her scarred and pregnant. Hopkins writes in free-verse poems that paint painfully sharp images of Kristina/Bree and those around her, detailing how powerful the "monster" can be. The poems are masterpieces of word, shape, and pacing, compelling readers on to the next chapter in Kristina's spiraling world. This is a topical page-turner and a stunning portrayal of a teen's loss of direction and realistically uncertain fnture.-Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WI

Korbeck, S. (2004). Crank. School Library Journal, 50(11), 145-145. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/211747962?accountid=7113

Suggestions
For students who have a hard time reading large blocks of text, this is a good genre to direct them to.  This is a good way to introduce poetry.  Students can use this as a spur to writing their own poems.  In the book one poem the character wrote was arranged in heart shapes.  Students can create poems in a shape.

References

Hopkins, E. (2004). Crank. New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Crank(hopkins).jpg