The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton Book Review

Genre: Realistic Fiction (Could Be Considered Historical Fiction)

Age: 12+

Pages: 180

Gender: Male

Plot: 3/5

Detail: 4/5

Characters: 5/5

Fast or Slow: 5/5

Enjoyment: 3.5/5

Cover: 0/3

Memorable: +2

Total: 22.5/28

Percent: 80%

Grade: B-

I was supposed to read this book for school over the last two boring weeks, but since I was sick I read it in a day. I was surprised, I thought I would hate it, but it wasn't too bad for a book that is labled as a textbook. The plot didn't really attract me. It is about a boy named Ponyboy, who is a greaser. He belongs to a group of I guess, friends who are also greasers. The Socs (people that have more money then the greasers) often hurt the greasers, because they different then them. So one day Ponyboy goes to the movies with two of the other people in their gang, Johnny and Dally, there Dally talks dirty to these two Soc girls, one of the girls, named Cherry gets mad at him after that Dally leaves and the two girls talk to Johnny and Dally. Later Two-Bit another person in their group comes and hangs out with the girls for awhile. The girls are by themselves because they got mad at their boyfriends. So after the movies their boyfriends come and pick the girls up, but they notice that they were hanging out with greasers. So later that night, after Ponyboy gets into a fight with his brother who is also his guardian because his parents died is a car crash, him and Johnny go on a walk. There the boyfriends find them and try to beat them up since they were hanging out with their girls. One of the guys tries to drown Ponyboy, so Johnny stabs him (the guy also hurt Johnny awhile ago, permently scaring him emotionally). So after Johnny kills him a whole new adventure starts up. So there is the plot, sorry I had to give away some of it because I couldn't figure out any other way to explain it. I think the details were pretty good, but two parts of the story bothered me, there were three deaths in the book and I don't think any of them were explained well. They made them way too short. Otherwise the details weren't that bad. The characters were great. Very well developed. They just seemed so real. The author made you care what happened to them. All of the characters were very original, full of emotion. The main character Ponyboy, was a very good character and a ok narrator. The book was very fast. Obviously, since it took me only a few hours to read. It gripped me by the throat and dragged me in. I enjoyed it but there were some things that bothered me. The author sometimes stops in the middle of telling the story and started describing something else, like a flashback of something of the sort. So that bothered me a little, or a lot. Another thing that bothered me a little was that when he was sick he kept saying the Johnny wasn't dead and that he, Ponyboy, really killed that Soc boy. Well, I was pretty sure that Johnny was dead, but all of a sudden I thought I might of missed something about Ponyboy actually killing the other boy, but he really didn't it was explained later. The cover was horrible, I would of  never picked this book up based on the cover, but the edition of the cover of the that I have checked out is the ugly 90s version. So maybe another edition would be better. I gave this book a +2 for memorable, because even though it is not my favorite book I think it is memorable, for the strong friendship feelings from this book. In all it was a ok book, for a book I have to read for school. I recommend this book for anyone who likes kind of tougher books and maybe the movie Grease because I think it is based around the same time.