So, Everything I “Knew” was Wrong: a Review of Dave Cullen’s Columbine

I was a freshman in high school when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold committed their heinous crime against their peers at Columbine High School. An unpopular, often bullied teen girl,I didn’t relate to the two boys, but I did feel sad for them. So shunned and alienated that they felt they had no other option, they had resorted to the unthinkable...

So imagine my surprise when I found out that nearly everything I remember from the media coverage surrounding the shooting was wrong. The boys weren’t in the “Trench Coat Mafia.” They weren’t bullied (and in fact often bullied younger students and people from marginalized groups). They came from normal families with decent incomes and Eric even had a date for prom. In other words, after reading Columbine by Dave Cullen, it seems more like Eric and Dylan we’re bored suburbanites suffering from mild affluenza than the outcasts I have spent my life believing they were.

While the correction of the media portrayal of Dylan and Eric was by far the element that I was most interested in, that’s not the only revelation the book discusses. Cullen explores the impact of the shooting on local religious groups, the truth behind the alleged martyrdom of Cassie Bernal, and the personal effects: things like depression, the dissolution of marriages, and more.

Columbine shone an in-depth and vivid, yet respectful, light on what will always stand out to me as the very unfortunate beginning of something. While the massacre at Columbine was certainly not the first school shooting on America’s soil, it is the first I was aware of and the one that stunned me to my core. It was the one that made me wake up to the fact that bad things could happen at school. Now, twenty years later, school shootings get a day or two of media coverage and are largely forgotten. Columbine, as Dave Cullen tells his audience, was first page news in The New York Times every day for two weeks. 

While this book doesn’t have a blatant message, it definitely shows us how much our culture has changed as school shootings have become all too common. Constantly showing a new angle, yet easy to follow and understand, this book was a page turner from the opening. I would recommend this very strongly with the warning that it isn’t easy to read.

4.5/5

ICYMI BOOK PICK: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #1)

I know you are never supposed to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes they're just so beautiful, I can't resist. This is one of those; a sturdy wooden door with a forest backdrop. A sunset. It gave me all the feels as soon as I picked it up.

Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway is the first in a series, but from what I've read on Goodreads, they each seem to be standalone (at least to some extent). the first book is focused on Nancy, the newest arrival at Miss Eleanor's home for Wayward Children. At first, I was hesitant to read this book. The name of the school sounded a bit too much like a Home for Peculiar Children rip-off but, while there are definitely similarities (supernatural elements, outcasts living under the roof of a loving, eccentric woman), that's not the case. The children at Miss Eleanor's are all united by a different quirky detail: they have all been kicked out of their magic
worlds (think Wonderland, Narnia) and have to acclimate to being back in the "real world."

Nancy is an outcast from the Land of the Dead and she is not into the brightness of the world around her. She's all about stillness, so the characters living around her are a bit much, particularly her roommate. It seems like Nancy is going to quietly bide her time until she can get home, but before that can happen, the borders start.

Part fantasy, part mystery, this book is ultimately a whodunit and why novel. The setting gives it a new depth and I found the idea behind it (what happens to kids who come back from fairyland) really fun and unique. All in all, great premise. The characters, too, were pretty cool: Kade, a trans boy who had to leave his land when he couldn’t be a princess, Jack and Jill, sisters, from some sort of war zone, and Nancy, who is asexual, all provided some diversity and I was about it. Nancy, though, was pretty flat and whole that’s part of her storyline, it felt lazy to me. Something could’ve made her a bit more dynamic. While I enjoyed the book, I was still glad her particular story was over. That said, the ending, too, was too easy. I won’t go into detail to avoid spoilers, but the ending felt too sudden and just wrapped things up too neatly. There were huge pacing issues. At just under 200 pages, there was definitely room to develop the ending a bit more and take some time to explore. As it stands now, it’s very abrupt.

All that said, I liked this book a lot more than I disliked it. The whimsical plot and lively cast of characters kept me entertained. I’ve already checked book four of the series out of the library (obviously I hate to read things out of order, but since they didn’t have the other two and these are standalone, I said what the heck) and I’m excited to read the therapist’s story. I’ll let you know what I think.

Happy reading!