Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
A Newbery Honor BookA Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book
A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award
An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
Parents' Choice Gold Award Winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017
A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017
A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017
An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds's fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds--the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he's going to murder the guy who killed his brother.
A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE
Or, you can call it a gun. That's what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That's where Will's now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother's gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he's after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that's when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn's gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn't know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck's in the elevator? Just as Will's trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck's cigarette. Will doesn't know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.
And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END...if WILL gets off that elevator.
Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.
JASON REYNOLDS is the author of the critically acclaimed When I Was the Greatest, for which he won the Coretta Scott King / John Steptoe Award for Emerging Talent; the Coretta Scott King Honor books The Boy in the Black Suit and All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely); As Brave As You, his middle grade debut; and Ghost, the first in a four-book series. Jason recently relocated to Washington, DC, but previously resided in Miles Morales' Brooklyn, New York.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781481438254 |
| ISBN 10 | 1481438255 |
| Title | Long Way Down |
| Author | Jason Reynolds |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Atheneum Books |
| Year published | 2017-10-24 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Prizes | Winner of Edgar Allan Poe Awards (Young Adult) 2018, Commended for Newbery Medal (Children's) 2018, Commended for Coretta Scott King Award (Author) 2018, Commended for Michael L. Printz Award (Children-Y/A Fiction) 2018 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |