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Twisted turned out to be the hardest and most painful thing I've read in a long time. It's brilliantly written and extremely important, but it is very intense. In my head, it's a companion piece to Speak, by the same author. Speak is pretty intense, but this is possibly even more so. I wish they'd let us teach them as a unit in schools, but most districts only let kids read Speak independently because of the subject matter. I had a prof last rotation who taught in a rural district with an unforgivably high date rape rate for high school students. he talked the district into letting him do a unit on Speak for Freshman English, and for that class and everyone after, the date rape rate dropped to almost nothing. You have to frame it right, of course, get the boys talking about what constitutes date rape, get them empathizing with the girls. The book is very good for that. It helps the girls form plans to watch out for each other too. Some people think the book's a bad influence because the character makes some bad choices and doesn't deal with things well in the beginning. Many teachers think that you can use that as a teachable moment for the kids, get them thinking about how better to handle things, but have to work it on the sly, one on one when they spot kids reading it.

Looking at Twisted, I think it'd be perfect right after Speak. Not only would it be good for the bystander boys to think through their responsibilities to the girls and women in their lives, but in a real sense it deals with trauma from the boy's side, with the shitty decisions guys make under pressure and how that can hurt not only themselves but those around them. It's the other side of the coin, a different meditation on grief and anger and bullying and frustration. It'd be painful and hard, but I think the way it deals with depression, bullying, and being trapped in a situation that feels out of control and the process of taking control back would be good for so many kids in distress out there. Even though the characters and circumstances are different, these two books just fit together, and i think they'd do a lot of good out in the schools if they let kids read them and teachers teach them, but I'm betting Twisted is banned a lot of places the way Speak is. Too many adults think ignorance will protect their children when all it does is leave them vulnerable without the tools to deal with the ugly stuff that happens to and around them.