Wearing a skirt in public wouldn’t seem like a big deal to most people, nor would it be a big deal to wear a skirt on a bus. It wasn’t a big deal to Sasha either, until one fateful afternoon on Sasha’s bus ride home. This bus ride would be the day that they fell victim to heinous act, committed by another teenager. With the flick of a lighter from a young boy encouraged by his friends, Sasha’s skirt went up in flames. The boys fled the scene and the passengers on the bus panicked all while Sasha screamed in pain.  This is the story of The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater, were two young people met under unfortunate circumstances, with one of them being sent to a burn hospital and the other being sentenced to prison. The book talks about themes which vary from crime and justice to racism and stereotypes through the four parts of this book. It’s a narrative driven story with certain chapters dedicated to information that keeps the reader up to date with everyone in the book. The people feel like fictional characters and it’s easy to get attached to them and see how they grow as people. “The 57 Bus” will show the reader how unjust juvenile courts can be and how a persons identity can be a staple in their wellbeing.

 

Slater writes in a very interesting way, giving a chapter to anything that might have been important to a character and leaving themes hidden in this chapters. The first part of the book is dedicated to Sasha; in this part, it talks about Sasha as a person, their friends and how their obsessed with certain things. It mentions their childhood and the part of town they grew up in all while leavings hints of how someone is not their obsessions and someones gender is important to the identity.

The first notebook page shows a mind map of the information given to the reader from Sasha’s part of the book. It explains what Sasha likes and who their friends are. This is information gathered from the first part of the book, scattered throughout various chapters. The bottom half of this page is themes that can be found throughout the book as a whole, the bottom of the page was updated every time that I found a new theme that could be included in this as long as I had proof from the book.

 

The second page is very similar to the first with a mind map of Richards “character” with all his likes, dislikes and prominent personality traits. Some of the traits are highlighted because they tie into the main story line and some can be a major plot point to Richards part or side of the story. The bottom of the page shows my tracking thoughts throughout mainly Richards part of the book. I would formulate questions or thoughts i had regarding Richard as a person, most of them being bad until I had finished the book. I had included a few quotes to prove my point with some thoughts, or even some questions.

Page 3 shows an in-class example of a skill used for non-fiction books (reread+research) with a story called “Hidden Figures” written by Margot Lee Shetterly about the women who helped with the moon landing at NASA. There was also notes from a mini-lesson where we watched and rewatched a video to come up with new questions as more of a rewatch and research. The skill was applied with parts of “The 57 Bus” that I felt needed to have more information on certain things. Those certain things being the prison that Richard was sent to.

This page ties in directly with the last. This page explains the history of Chad, the youth correctional facility that Richard had been sent to. When it had been in full swing in the 1990’s to the early 2000’s, Chad was known as one of the worst places to send your children who had committed crimes. The guards were terrible towards their inmates and had done terrible things to them. In 2006, there had been a protest from angry parents of the inmates about how their children should not be treated this way and how children should be treated like children, the correctional facility had to be changed. By 2015, it had completely changed for the better and the inmates who were sentenced there would often leave becoming better people and better versions of themselves, unlike how people would leave before then. During the present time, all juvenile detention centers has been shut down in California, so Chad no longer exists. This was the research I had done as a part of the reread and research lesson.

Notebook page 5 is a map of all the central ideas of each part of the book and the book as a whole. Each part will have at least one or two unique central ideas that directly relates to the narrative of the part of the story it was found in. These ideas can range from gender identity in Sasha’s part (part 1) all the way to if children should be tried as adults or not in the part called Justice (part 4).

These final two pages are quote walls. The quote walls were created to be evidence for the claim of the central ideas and themes of this book. The quotes were all pulled from different parts of the book to prove a point that was specifically made in one part of the book. The writing underneath the quotes is to be reasoning to the evidence so that these quotes could be used in a C.E.R task. Another purpose of the quote wall was to keep the quotes in one spot for easier tracking in the book.

 

Overall, this book is pretty good for those who like non-fiction books, or even just true crime fans. This book is an amazing opportunity to learn about the 57 bus case and to learn about the injustice of the juvenile court system.