Scorpions

Scorpions. ISBN: 0-06-0623-7. Walter Dean Myers. 1988. Newberry Honor Award. Young Adult. Multicultural.

Scorpions, by Walter Dean Myers, tells the story of a young man struggling to survive in the harsh reality of poverty. Jamal is a 12-year-old African American boy who lives with his sister, Sassy, and his mother. His brother Randy is in jail for being involved in a robbery in which someone was killed, and his father, Jevon, comes around for money every now and then, but is absent due to his abusive ways. This character does not have a good male role model, and may be inclined to succumb to peer pressure, which is all around him in the form of the Scorpions gang. He does have one good friend, Tito, who is Puerto Rican American and being rasied my his grandmother. Jamal is pressured from his brother to lead the Scorpions, who deal drugs, so he can get money to bail him out of jail. He is given a gun by Mack, a Scorpions member, but still finds an honest job at the grocery store. Eventually he loses this job due to his new friends in the gang stealing from the store. Jamal uses the gun to threaten his bully at school, Dwayne, and feels the power it holds, but soon realizes that it is more trouble than it is worth, as Tito gets kicked out of his house for hiding it, and eventually uses it to defend Jamal in a gang fight, accidentally killing someone. Tito must go back to Puerto Rico, and Jamal must stay behind to face his life either by becoming part of the negativity or choosing a different path.

This book is filled with life lessons. Jamal is a character that seems to want to do what's right, and stay out of trouble, but cannot avoid it because of his brother, the Scorpions, and his surroundings in general. I would use this book to discuss peer pressure and how the consequences of succumbing to it can be severly detrimental. This is a very serious issue for students in the middle school and high school years. We could discuss ways in which to avoid being swayed into doing something you know is wrong and how what seems like the easiest path may not be the right one. Though I may not be teaching in an inner city school, these issues are still prevalent, especially amongst this age group.