The Outsiders

 Book Cover Credit: www.barnesandnoble.com 


Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. New York: Dell Publishing, 1967.
             ISBN: 0440967694

 Awards/Honors:
New York Herald Tribune Best Teenage Books List, 1967
Chicago Tribune Book World Spring Book Festival Honor Book, 1967
Media and Methods Maxi Award, 1975
ALA Best Young Adult Books, 1975
Massachusetts Children's Book Award, 1979

Annotation:
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is a coming of age novel looking at the life of young Ponyboy Curtis and his gang the Greasers. At the age of fourteen, Ponyboy's mother and father are dead and so he begins to learn to fight for his family, individualism, and hardships of death and grief.

Review: 
S.E. Hinton takes the life of a fourteen year old gang member and creates a world that readers instantly becomes emotionally attached. As Ponyboy struggles to survive in a world where "all that exist" are Greasers and Socs, he faces the challenges of understanding, relating, and growing into the world around him. After his friend Johnny murders a Soc for trying to drown Ponyboy. The boys run away to escape the fuzz but little does Ponyboy realize along his journey he will learn what it means to survive, manage to learn about himself, and find the true meaning of family.