A review by falconerreader
The Battle of Jericho by Sharon M. Draper

2.0

The writing felt clunky to me, the dialogue unnatural. I just read Mexican Whiteboy, which captured perfectly the speech patterns of teenagers. Battle of Jericho tries to do the same, but fails. This detracted a good deal from what could have been a dramatic book. The subtle twist with the foreshadowing of death was good, and frankly, it's nice to find a YA novel about African American kids that's not about their race. (Through that made the branding and other humiliation scenes extra creepy.) Of all the books in my department's bullying unit, this is one of the only ones I think we should pull. Kids may think differently--I'll see.