Burning Up by Caroline B. Cooney

Reviewed by Jennifer

Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language: There is a handful of swear words and profanities. The book deals with issues of race and there is some racist speech as characters explain their attitudes toward African Americans in the late 1950s.

Violence: Characters caught in a fire started by an arsonist. A 9-year old is stabbed at a school and a teenager is killed in a gang fight. These two incidents are related after the fact to the reader. It is not live action.

Adult Themes: This book deals with several facets of race relations. One being the inequality of children born into well-to-do white families living in the suburbs as compared to children born to inner-city families where gang violence and drug dealers are on every corner. The main character, Macey, grapples with these disparities and tries to do her part to help.

Another aspect of race is Macey’s discovery of the attitudes held by these well-to-do white families, including her own grandparents, during the late 1950s.

Synopsis

Macey Clare has grown up in a privileged Connecticut town where everything is almost perfect. But as Macey gets involved in a research project about a fire in 1959, she discovers that all may not be as it seems. The first black school teacher in the town lived in the building that burned. Is it possible that the people she knows and loves could be guilty of hate crimes?

Burning Up is a very worthwhile book. It asks some hard questions about race and privilege that will help teenagers to evaluate their own situations and to decide what they can do to help others.

©2009 The Literate Mother