Kent State

By: Deborah Wiles

Narrated by: Christopher Gebauer, Lauren Ezzo, Christina Delaine, Johnny Heller, Roger Wayne, Korey Jackson, David de Vries

Winner of the American Library Association’s 2021 Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production!

From two-time National Book Award finalist Deborah Wiles, a masterpiece exploration of one of the darkest moments in our history, when American troops killed four American students protesting the Vietnam War.

May 4, 1970.

Kent State University.

As protestors roil the campus, National Guardsmen are called in. In the chaos of what happens next, shots are fired and four students are killed. To this day, there is still argument of what happened and why.

Told in multiple voices from a number of vantage points - protestor, Guardsman, townie, student - Deborah Wiles's Kent State gives a moving, terrifying, galvanizing picture of what happened that weekend in Ohio...an event that, even 50 years later, still resonates deeply.

©2020 Scholastic Inc (P)2020 Scholastic Inc

Engaging for students

This was my first year teaching this book to my group of heterogeneously grouped 9th graders. There is a huge range of skills and learning needs in that classroom, with many ESOL students. The readers are clear. The kids also loved the use of music in "Elegy," the final chapter, and noted that this made it feel more emotional and moving. This audiobook helped us explore tone and perspective in historical fiction. Even students who are self-proclaimed "non-readers" admitted that they loved this book and felt engaged while listening.

I do think that in a teaching context it is essential to have a physical copy of the book for students to follow along with as they listen to the audiobook. Deborah Wiles makes a lot of choices with font and formatting that are reflected in the readers' voices.

Highly recommend!

Moving history

I love the way this book was told from multiple perspectives. The audio used multiple voices to tell this story. It sounds natural and conversational. The book is riveting and moving telling about each of the victims of the Kent State shooting. I highly recommend!

Not what I expected

I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while, but I thought it would be a typical nonfiction read. However, I was so wrong. It does a wonderful job of holding space for different voices from the events through a conversational style. I listened to the audiobook while reading the hardcopy. The audiobook was able to bring the events to life. Loved this!

A play like telling

Bordering on obnoxious. Voices going back and fourth constantly. It’s one of the worst audiobooks I’ve listened to.
The story itself is important though.

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Role playing by many. This wasn't so much a book as a performance about the Kent State shooting, by multiple voices from different perspectives. Multiple narrators made it a bit hard to understand. It starts by calling the incident a tragedy--one person's opinion--it's a biased view point. And it's a reflection of the 1960s. Don't believe that I'll read anymore of Deborah Wiles' books.