16/December/2010
Black and White Book Review

In the book Black and White, Paul Volponi does a sensational job of showing how friendships can just be torn apart anyway possible. Black and White shows the ups and downs in an unbreakable friendship. Paul Volponi is an award winning author for the IRA Children’s Book Award (young adult fiction). Paul has also written many other books and one happens to be Rooftop, which is another award winning book.

Black and White is an amazing fiction book for young adults. Young adults would be the best fit for the intended audience because the story takes place in Long-Island High school. About two boys named Eddie (White) and Marcus (black) that are seniors at Long-Island and play for the basketball team that get in some major trouble. I think the purpose for this work is to learn by you mistakes and try the best you can to stay out of trouble.

The title fits this book because it’s the two main characters nicknames. The title is implied in the work when the characters are together usually. The book is pretty interesting and creative by making the title resemble the two main characters in the book and to see what happens to the two threw tough times.

The story Black and White takes place in Astoria and Queens, New York and partially Rikers Island. Which these two places do exist. Black and White take place in an earlier time period because Eddie tells how his amazing friendship grew and grew but then took a dramatic fall.

Eddie and Marcus are the two main characters in this story. They happen to be the same age at 18 years old and are seniors at Long-Island High School. Eddie is white and short. He has a sister named Rose, which is who Marcus likes, and a mom. Marcus is black and tall. But only has his mom. Both Eddie and Marcus have college dreams but is all thrown down the drain by on incident.

Both Eddie and Marcus are in high school and want some money. They think the best and fastest way to do so is to stick up people coming out of stores. On one of these stick ups one mistake was made. It was carrying a gun because during a stick up Eddie accidently fired the weapon so the two fled. The man the stuck up that night recognized Marcus but not Eddie. So Marcus got busted. Being a true friend he is, Marcus doesn’t rat out Eddie and takes the blame. Both Eddie and Marcus had dreams of play basketball professionally but now they are unsure it will happen. Also their friendship is now on the line. Will Marcus speak up or not? You’ll have to read to find out the rest!


The quotes that stood out were the ones that held emotion and stress. Paul made these quotes constantly throughout the story, which I think made the book even better than it was.


I think Paul, the author, was trying to tell his readers when life is good don’t mess it up. Also when you could completely avoid a bad situation do so. Think about the consequences of the action before you do it. That’s the message I think Paul was trying to get to in the novel Black and White.