Kent State by Deborah Wiles

Bibliographic Information:

• Title: Kent State
• Author: Deborah Wiles
• ISBN: 1338356283
• Publisher: Scholastic
• Copyright Date: April 21, 2020

Genre: Historical Fiction/Poetry/History

Format: Book

Awards/Honors: Odyssey Award Audiobook 2021, YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers nominee 2021, YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults nominee 2021

Reading Level/Interest Level: Teens ages 13-18 (Goodreads.com, 2020)

Plot Summary: On May 4, 1970, four college students were shot and killed and nine others were injured by the National Guard on the Kent State College Campus while protesting the Vietnam War. The students were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, as well as the National Guard presence on campus. The shootings followed days of protesting in which beer bottles were thrown at local policemen, windows were broken in local businesses, and the ROTC building on campus was burned down. The Ohio National Guard was called in to help disperse the crowds and used tear gas when the crowd refused to leave. Some National Guardsmen began firing into the crowd, killing four and injuring nine other students, including one who was permanently paralyzed. There are many versions and differing eye witness accounts of the events that day. This book tells the story of the three days leading up to that day, and the tragic event itself, using various points of view.

Author Background: Deborah Wiles is an American author from Mobile, Alabama. She grew up in an Air Force family who lived all over the world. She spent the summers of her childhood in Mississippi, and currently lives in Atalnta, Georgia. Wiles is the author of Love, Ruby Lavender (2005), and Freedom Summer (2005), Each Little Bird That Sings (2006) and Revolution (2014). Her most recent book is the YA novel Kent State (2020) (Deborah Wiles, 2021). She has won many literary awards including the Odyssey Award for Kent State in 2020. Most of Wiles’ literature focuses on home, family, kinship, and community, and often deals with historical events and social justice issues (Wikipedia, 2021).

Deborah Wiles received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College. She has taught writing at Towson University in Maryland and in the MFA programs at Lelsey University in Massachusetts and at Vermont College. Currently, she teaches writers at workshops, residencies, and conferences around the world (Deborah Wiles, 2021).

Critical Evaluation: Kent State is a novel written in verse about the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970. It is beautifully written, moving, powerful, and thought provoking. The story is told from many different vantage points which are differentiated by different type faces in the book. These include the students who were protesting, the towns people, the National Guard, and a group of black students. The varying points of view are woven together in chronological order. At times the book is a little confusing, but overall, it gets the message across. In the prelude, Deborah Wiles provides background and information on the Vietnam War and its disapproval by the American public. At the end of the book, the author details her research process and important information about the tragic event. Wiles calls on young people to “make commitments to the tenets of democracy that say we have freedom of speech, press, assembly, and petition in our public places” (Wiles, 2020). Teens who like historical fiction and books written in verse will find this book engaging and powerful.

Creative Use for a Library Program: For a library program, I would use Kent State to open a dialogue about civil rights and free speech. I would have the teens reflect on the events at Kent State and compare them to the protests and riots happening in the U.S. today concerning civil rights, police brutality, and the Black Live Matter movement. The teens could write their own poetry about a current event or issue.

Speed-Round Book Talk: “Four Dead in Ohio” are the lyrics to the famous song by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, but do you want to learn the whole story of what happened that day? Read Kent State by Deborah Wiles and find out! This book in verse is sure to keep you engaged while you learn a little U.S. history.

Potential Challenge Issues and Defense: Potential challenges for Kent State could arise from different people’s opinions of the events that occurred on May 4, 1970. There are many eye-witness accounts and different perspectives of who is to blame for the tragic events. A defense to this could be that all history has different sides to its story, and the best thing to do is learn from it so that history does not repeat itself.

Reason for Inclusion: I included Kent State because it is a tragic event that occured in U.S. history that all teens should learn about. It is a short, beautifully written, book in verse that sends a powerful message about the right to free speech, to assemble, and to protest. Teens can make the connection between what happened at Kent State and what is happening in our country today.

References:

Deborah Wiles. (2021). Author. Retrieved from https://deborahwiles.com/biography/

I Read YA. (2020, May 1). Friday Reads | Deborah Wiles reads Kent State. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDPhpWkYj84&t=3s&ab_channel=IreadYA

Scholastic. (2019, December 12). Kent State by Deborah Wiles. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA7Iff2zQeo&ab_channel=Scholastic

Wikipedia. (2021, May 11). Deborah Wiles. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Wiles

Wiles, D. (2020). Kent State. Scholastic.