Prisoner in Alcatraz

It is your right to have: food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege.

Welcome to Alcatraz, the most notorious prison in America.

Interest age 14+, Reading age 4th grade. Marty is a young, simple man who dreams of growing tomatoes in the warm sun of Mexico. But he gets himself into a bit of trouble when he agrees to help out a friend and ends up in the hardest prison in America: Alcatraz. Marty is sentenced to life, and nobody ever get’s out of Alcatraz. But now there’s a new escape plan – and Marty is the only one that can make it happen. Will Marty break out of Alcatraz – or will life mean life?

This terrifically taut and short novel is targeted for reluctant/struggling readers or children with dyslexia. The interest level is aged 14 and up, while it is at a 4th grade reading level.

“Inspired by a modern visit to the now disused but eternally notorious prison, and the story of an attempted breakout nearly sixty years ago, Theresa Breslin tells of Marty, a teenager who has run away from a children's home in Chicago, whose dreams of a life growing tomatoes and peppers in the warmth of California or Mexico are destroyed by 20 seconds of blind panic when he gets involved in a friend's plan to rob a bank. As a result, Marty faces the threat of the electric chair, but his disadvantaged background wins him a reprieve: instead he must serve his life out in Alcatraz. Here he is haunted by the memory of his crime, and he comes to experience that cruelty, treachery and intimidation happen inside the prison just as it did in the slums from which he came. Breslin's writing is spare, direct, colloquial and poetic. Marty tells his own story, and through it we come to see how his dreadful experiences have created a strength of character and an insight into the irony of his situation, growing tomatoes in the California sun... Another of Barrington Stokes excellent short novels for reluctant teenage readers, expertly marketed at its target audience, and offering Key Stage 3 and older readers the opportunity to reflect on many aspects of the history, citizenship, and PSHE curriculum”

-From the Write Away! Website: www.writeaway.org.uk 
Review by Bridget Carrington