Donald R. Gallo

There are ten plays that feature teenagers, all of them written by award-winning authors of novels for young adults (A. R. Carter; S. B. Pfeffer; L. Namioka; C. Forshay-Lunsford; D. Malmgren; J. D. Okimoto; O. Sebestyen; S. Asher; W. D. Myers; R. F. Brancato). They were written to be performed on the stage or in a classroom.
Among the one-act plays in this collection we can find a high school girl who has tried to run away from problems at home and must find the strength within herself to show more carry on; in another play a teenage boy feels torn apart by his parents' problems. On the lighter side, there's disaster-prone Ben Cameron, who has just set a new record by flunking his driving test before his car even leaves the lot, and Cassie Tate, whose unreasonable fears keep her confined to her room in spite of everyone's efforts to lure, bully, trick, and scare her out. CAGES will force readers to think about how we let others determine our destinies.
And for something really different, readers will be able to participate in the outcome of the final play in this collection by writing their own ending. show less

I'm still longing for books about school shootings, and this collection of stories was written kind of in response to those young adults who stood up after Columbine and pointed out the problems abounding in the public school system.

Those kids were promptly expelled, put into therapy, or silenced for not adhering to the "axis of evil" terminolgy suddenly surrounding the kids who shot up the school. Some of these stories are good, particularly Angela Johnson's "Through A Window," which is show more quite complex and well formed, and not at all the situational feel good story about getting to know all the freaks in your class and changing your white, popular perspective kind of drivel that opens the collection.

why aren't we still talking about people who shoot up schools? show less

I'm still longing for books about school shootings, and this collection of stories was written kind of in response to those young adults who stood up after Columbine and pointed out the problems abounding in the public school system.

Those kids were promptly expelled, put into therapy, or silenced for not adhering to the "axis of evil" terminolgy suddenly surrounding the kids who shot up the school. Some of these stories are good, particularly Angela Johnson's "Through A Window," which is show more quite complex and well formed, and not at all the situational feel good story about getting to know all the freaks in your class and changing your white, popular perspective kind of drivel that opens the collection.

why aren't we still talking about people who shoot up schools? show less

Very well done sampler of different authors, most of which I'v read before but a few new to me; if my to-read list weren't already a mile long, and if I were more of a fan of books for teens, I would be taking notice of a lot of titles. Still, can't quite give it four stars, because it really doesn't transcend genre, and the stories are too short to be memorable, in *my* opinion.