School pisses Colin off; so do his teachers who view him as a troublemaker. But what really pisses him off are the bullies who get away with it because no one wants to break the code of silence that the bullies rely on. When Colin interrupts Liam and Craig picking on an old man during lunch break, the vice principal catches the tail end where the old man yells at Colin and he gets in trouble for it. He also winds up on Liam and Craig’s hit list and a photoshopped, nude photo of Colin winds up on GoofFace. Colin could handle that because the body wasn’t even his and anyone would see that. But when pictures of his female friends begin appearing and Emily, a fellow outcast, tells him that she thinks Liam and Craig did it to retaliate for the girls turning them down, Colin feels he has to do something about it and considers defying the unwritten social rules of no snitching. The unwritten code is so pervasive in the school that even the vice principal accuses him of ratting when he comes to tell him what is happening. This book for reluctant readers provides a realistic portrayal of timely topics including cyberbullying, sexual harassment, and school violence. ( )

Lesley Choyce’s urban tale Rat has all the makings of a story that boys who consider themselves to be misunderstood might cherise. Rat’s main character, Colin, is a secretly smart and artistic kid that has been labeled as a “troublemaker” by adults in authority that is just out to get him; the kind of lone wolf that would bother saving an old man from two bullies but somehow gets blamed for the man’s harassment. Choyce goes to great lengths to make sure the reader is utterly sure of Colin’s badassdom; he smokes occasionally, he claims he “more or less raised” himself, and he has a thing for ferocious rats, whom he adopts as a sort of spirit animal. Yet he is also a martyr, out to find justice for girls whose faces have been photoshopped onto nude bodies and subsequently circulated around the school, and he does not care what kind of enemies he makes along the way. (Colin is similarly intimidated and photoshopped, but it never bothers him because he is a badass, remember?)
Rat is clunky at best, and its characters feel half-formed. The portrayal of Colin’s closest friend, Emily, a dreadlocked, activist, hippy-type, is often contradictory, where one minute she is a damsel in distress begging for Colin’s help and the next she is angry at him for helping her. However, any story about social media bullying and school violence is timely and worthwhile for teenage readers, no matter how skillfully that story is told. ( )

Choyce, Lesley. Rat. Canada, Orca Book Publishers, 2012.
Characters: Colin, Emily, Amanda, Marissa, Craig, Liam, Jerome, Mr. Miller
Setting: Lower income inner-city high school
Theme: Speaking out, drugs, violence
Genre: Young adult realistic fiction
Golden Quote: “You want me to be your mole? Your spy? Your snitch?”
Summary: A story of a very troubling looking at America’s youth and their social behaviors as technology grows. The story is about an out casted individual who is picked on for being different and the actions committed against him for standing up to bullies. The student’s at Colin’s high school are all afraid to speak out against the crimes being committed in their school because they are afraid of the repercussions. Colin stands up to Craig and Liam when they are bullying an elderly man. As a result of this, Craig and Liam post up pictures on the internet of Colin in the nude. When Colin finds this out, he is not too concerned because he knows the picture are a lie, but he soon finds out that these two cyber bullies have been doing this to girls at his school, if they refused to do what Craig and Liam wanted. Colin decides to blow the whistle on this and as a result is referred to as “the rat”. Colin decides to stop speaking out because of the bullying and harassment he receives at his school. This results in one of his fellow classmate’s death when he remained silent about information he knew regarding an incident at his high school.
Audience: 7th grade and up
Curriculum: Cyber-bullying, digital citizenship
Personal Response: This was a very difficult book to read because the story about Colin hits very close to home. Children and teens nowadays have an enormous amount of power at their fingertips, to spread whatever rumor or images they would like. This story tells the struggles and some of the repercussions someone who would stand up to a cyber-bully might face. At one point in Colin’s story, he decides to embrace the title of the “rat” and decides that he will talk to his vice principal, Mr. Williams, and the police to let them know exactly what is happening. Colin struggles throughout the story to decide whether to break the “code of silence” amongst his classmates. The moment that Colin realized that because he stayed quite about events he knew, a classmate ended losing his life. Colin then decides to not stay silent any longer. This is a great book for younger teens to read because it gives them examples of effective ways of combating cyber-bullying. It also shows the teens, in a very realistic manner, what the consequences could be in keeping your silence. Cyber-bullying is a very big topic today and with this book, it can help guide kids and show them what the repercussions are in leaving bullying or cyber-bullying in the dark.
Note: There are some offensive words in book as well as situations that have to deal with drugs and violence. This would be a great book to give to your teen or family member, but I would find it difficult to be available through the school library, at least in regards to middle schools.