We may have an accurate telling of things that have happened in boot camps, but we do not have any accurate depictions of teens.Strasser, Todd 1950- (Morton Rhue) PERSONAL:īorn May 5, 1950, in New York, NY son of Chester S. Or perhaps a better story using the information from research.

More compelling would be an oral history, interviews with several people with who went to different camps. I realize this is a YA book, but teens are smarter than this.

At the end of the story, the author wants us to see what it would be like if our narrator was successfully brainwashed, so he suddenly is. Also our narrator behaves rather inconsistently with his character, needing to be convinced to try an escape from the camp, for example. The story jumps chronologically, losing chunks of time with nothing changing in the life of the narrator-I mean that it seams like one chapter is the day after another, but we're told it's months later. Sadly, the story was tragically injured in the author's attempt to convey his message. It includes a list of references and everything. This book succeeds at being a vehicle for portraying life in a Boot Camp. So this is definitely something worth checking out. The research that Strasser clearly did very well weaves in nicely with the plot of the book the actual details about the boot camp are depicted very well from the perspective of a (very unique and fleshed-out) teenager who's living it.īoot Camp actually made me interested in researching boot camps further, and it's become a topic of interest for me. This book was the first time I was really introduced to the concept of 'boot camps' beyond the cartoon-y ones depicted on TV. Garrett had flaws- he's definitely got some arrogance to him, he's definitely under the heading of 'too smart for his own good' (as he himself points out)- but none of these flaws are enough to make you hate him, or not root for him. He was so good at it that it wasn't until I was a bit older and could read the book with a little more experience and maturity behind me that I realized that there was some unreliable narrator stuff going on- Garrett thinks that everything he's done is justified, whereas some might read the book and say, 'eh, that's debatable at best'. Strasser is excellent at making you see things from Garrett's perspective and even sympathizing with him to a great deal. Garrett was an interesting character, to say the least. I've read a few of Todd Strasser's books, but this one, by far, is my favorite. This is another one of those books I read repetitively as a teenager, because I just really, really enjoyed it.

Boot camp todd strasser summary