True Notebooks - Tapa dura

'I devoured this book. It's not only the notebooks of juvenile offenders that are true (and insightful and poignant and very funny) but the account of the odyssey of their writing teacher as well. It's all soft underbelly in these pages, human beings at their best against great odds, searching for redemption.' Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking 'Early in the book, a friend of Salman's complains that there are no good books about juvenile delinquents. Well, there's one now - one that examines a broken system with grace, wit, and gripping storytelling.' Booklist

Mark Salzman never thought he would be teaching writing at Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for kids in L.A. But the writing changed his mind. Underneath their bravado, his students were terrified young men and they wrote about their fears with remarkable candour and imagination. Many of these pieces are included in the book. Like Salzman, we come to know and care about the boys through them - of their love for their mothers, anger towards their fathers, guilt for the pain they have caused, despair that they may have lost their chances at life. True Notebooks is his wonderful account of these classes: of his students, their writing and his own silent transformation. Impassioned, generous and eye-opening, it is about the nature of writing, the necessity of self-expression and above all about the great magic that can sometimes occur in a classroom.