MUST READ: When it comes to drug abuse, Crank packs more punch than an after-school special.
By Martin Perina, Staff Writer
Fear no more, earnest teenager. Finally, I found a book that we can all enjoy: Crank.
Crank is a free-verse poetry book about a young girl with a meth addiction. This must-read book for teens is based off of author Ellen Hopkins’ own daughter’s experience with methamphetamine (“meth”).
The story is simple and highly relatable to students. It is not only informative, but gives the reader the strongest understanding possible about drug use without becoming an addict themselves. The book’s main aim, of course, is to prevent drug use by showing the detrimental effects of drugs; it does a fantastic job. Hopkins tells a tale of a young, bright girl named Christina who falls into the dark, strong clutches of the monster (monster being a metaphor for the enslavement to meth).
Christina is just an ordinary girl living in Reno, Nevada, with her mother and stepfather; her real father lives in Albuquerque. She is a straight-A, honor roll student, heading into her junior year of high school. Over the summer, Christina hopes to reconnect with her father and travels to Albuquerque for a three week visit. What she found, however, is appalling. Her father is a drug addict who leaves her alone all day in a dilapidated apartment.
In need of companionship, she soon finds herself in a fast paced relationship with a sly, meth-addicted teen named Adam. Christina starts doing things she never thought she would: indulging in sexual activity, taking up the habit of smoking cigarettes, and snorting “crank” (meth). When she returns to her home in Reno, she is no longer mommy’s little girl; she is a hungry meth addict. Christina soon finds new connections to feed her addiction in Reno and starts her journey down a dark path. She makes new friends and meets new guys who violate and abuse her. Her parents notice something is off, but by this point, they are too late; the monster has taken her away, literally. She begins to call herself Bree and becomes a person her family no longer recognizes.
The story is a fast read that develops quickly. Do not let the 537 pages fool you; I read it in a day. The vocabulary is easy to understand for teenagers, and the sentence structure is primarily brief and loaded with description. It is a poem after all. The one element that really makes this book unique is the way it is written and presented. The words do not go horizontally across the page, forming rows that never seem to end, but rather they bounce around the page. Sometimes, half a sentence is written on the left side of the page and the rest on the right. Other times, the words are spaced out as if they were broken away from each other and scattered around the page in a random line, forcing the reader to pause and then continue, as a comma would. The words may even be clumped together in the shape of an object that sparks an emotion, like words shaped into a staircase going down. The book definitely has style and transfers powerful connections and emotions.
With its everlasting impression, Crank is the type of book you read once and never forget. The only concern here is that it contains mature (age 14+) material, which for teen readers may mean parent approval is necessary. Nevertheless, this book is powerful and informative with the spark necessary to drive a conversation about drugs. Though it is more of a teen read, I would strongly recommend it to both teens and their parents.
Read Crank if you are curious or bored; just read it.