A review by fireweed15
Kent State by Deborah Wiles

5.0

A black and white photograph showing college students standing on a paved street and grass on a college campus. The camera's focus is on a young woman wearing a short sleeved shirt, short white scarf and jeans. Her expression is anguished; she is kneeling next to another student, shouting as she gestures off frame. The student she kneels next to is male, wearing a jacket and jeans, and laying face down on the pavement.

Throughout my high school education, this image has been a mainstay in my history textbooks. It stays with you not just because of repeated exposure, but because the pain the image conveys. Kent State, a novel in verse told from multiple points of view, takes that pain and builds up to and amplifies it. As I read the book, I felt like I was sitting in the middle of a room, with the narration coming from all sides. The feeling is surreal, but the emotions of the novel are real and deep, and the questions of how and why are both thought provoking and, even fifty years later, hauntingly relevant.