Revised Reading Response

Nineteen Minutes

Boom! Boom! Shots were fired at Sterling High School. In my independent reading book, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, a school shooting occurred at Sterling High School. I’m not so far into the book yet but, this shooting happened and it made me wonder, how does a school shooting affect people?  Will this make people uncomfortable everywhere they go?

In the book, many people were wounded or even found dead in the school after the incident. I feel that after this whole problem, the students and staff at Sterling High won’t feel safe, knowing that you don’t really know what is running through anybody’s head.  Peter Houghton’s mom said the same thing. She said that everything was just fine and that she would have never suspected this. This also made me wonder, how does Peter’s mom feel about this? How will everyone else react towards her? In the book, one of the detectives said, “She didn’t look like a person who’d created a monster,” (Picoult, 53). This shows how people are feeling towards her or that people will be giving her mean looks for giving birth to a son that was shooting in the school. But, who knew that was going to happen that day? No one knew, not even his mom.

The school shooting made me wonder if Peter was bullied in school. Did he hate somebody in the school so much that this incident occurred? On page 57, it stated, “He’s the only victim that’s been shot twice. Once in the gut, once in the head.” What did this person do to Peter that he was the only one shot twice? So many questions were flying through my head when I read this. Peter must have had something against him, or hated this him most of all.

To sum it up, an incident like this affects everyone that was there or lost loved ones. In the book, everyone was affected in a way, even the shooters mother. Even still lots of questions run through my head. What made Peter decide to do this?