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Forty-Nine Minutes of Madness
April 20, 1999, was an ordinary school day for students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Classrooms were full of students finishing their last assignments before final exams. When the bell rang for the first lunch period, some went outside to enjoy the warm weather, but minutes later, the sound of gunfire pierced the peaceful spring day. At 11:19 A.M., two students, Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold, unleashed a long-planned murderous assault on their fellow classmates at Columbine, leaving twelve students and one teacher dead before taking their own lives. Author Judy L. Hasday carefully examines one of the worst incidents of school violence in American history, including accounts from witnesses and survivors.
* Reviews *
In this updated replacement for her 2002 Columbine High School Shooting, Hasday offers a moment-by-moment chronicle of the massacre. This also looks at the Littleton, Colorado, community and the families of the two killers and provides accounts of the immediate aftermath, the official investigation, and subsequent events, including the unveiling of the Columbine Memorial in 2007. Along with blurry security-camera footage and murky color photos of grieving students, the illustrations include a few post-2002 images, such as a page from one of the killers daybooks. The writing won't win any prizes, and next to the cogent analyses in Diane Marczely Gimpels The Columbine Shootings (2012), the author's attempts to illuminate the mass murderers psychology are superficial. Still, this entry in the Disasters: People in Peril series makes a serviceable source of information about the tragedy for less able readers., Booklist October 1, 2012
RL
Grades
5-7 IL
Grades
5-9 GRL
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