The Outsiders
by S.E. Hinton

Penguin Group, 1967, 180 pp., $6.99
ISBN 0-14-038572

The Outsiders is  a story about a fourteen-year-old boy named Ponyboy Curtis.  He doesn’t have much.  His parents died in a car crash, and now lives with his two older brothers Darryl “Darry” and Sodapop  He’s also a Greaser, which means he lives in the poor side of town. and is constantly tormented by the Socs, who are the rich kids who live on the nice side of town.  When Ponyboy’s older brother Darry hits him for getting home late, he runs away to the park with his friend Johnny.  When they reach the park and are jumped by some of the Socs, Johnny saves Ponyboy from the Socs drowning him in a fountain, but goes too far in doing so, and they run away together.  But the worst is yet to come...

Hinton brings a great variety of characters into the story, ranging from Ponyboy’s happy-go-lucky brother Sodapop, to the tough, hard member of the group, Dallas “Dally” Winston.  All with different personalities that are shown at some point in the story.

This book is a favorite of mine because I liked the overall theme of  facing your problems instead of running away from them, because after Ponyboy and Johnny ran away, things started to go bad for them.  The reason I like this theme is because it’s something we as human beings all have to face at some point in life, no matter what that problem is.

Another reason this book is amazing to me is because of the writing style.  S.E. Hinton wrote it at the age of 15 and it seems so down-to-earth for a fifteen-year-old to have written.  It isn’t a book where there are a few problems solved within two or three chapters, as you may expect from a teenager. And there are also a lot of bittersweet moments such as the ending which ends at a point where things could go better or worse but they will definitely change.

I would recommend this book for people between the ages of 12 and 20 because it may be too serious for young children, and it’s a good book for young adults.  I would also recommend the book to anyone who has ever been in a situation where they were afraid to face the truth.

~ reviewed by Davis