Boy 87 came frighteningly close to becoming too much for me as a reader. As I read on, there was one stage where I was filled with a sickening sense of dread. I remembered Chalkline, which I could not finish reading because it was so well told that the story was overwhelmingly traumatic for me - more than I could take. And then I also remembered The Bone Sparrow, a wonderful tale of war and hope.Boy 87 fits somewhere between the two. At the stage when I was not sure if I could read on, I quickly skimmed through a few of the concluding pages. Was Shif going to be betrayed? Was something terrible going to happen?I never do this. But the dread was so sickening that I knew I would not be able to read it if things grew more traumatic.Boy 87 is about 14-year-old Shif, who is put into prison - not for something he does but for something he is going to do. … [Read more...]