Foreign
Exchange:
When students from urban Tower High School are invited to spend a weekend in Hudson Landing, not all of the residents of the rural town are pleased. The city kids will bring crime and drugs, some say. There’s no place for them in small-town America. Each urban teenager is paired with a rural teen, with interesting and sometimes, comic results. But when beautiful local girl Kristen Clarke is found murdered, townspeople point the finger at Kwame Richards, a black kid from Tower High who danced with Kristen at the “foreign exchange” dance. Readers become fiercely absorbed in this story in poems as they try to figure out who killed Kristen Clarke. Reviews: "Glenn's latest… reflects what teens think about and deal with in their everyday lives-relationships with parents, sex, school, the future. The drama isn't in the action or the mystery, but in the feeling behind the words." - Booklist "A progression of first-person poems in free verse tell the story of how Kwame, a black teen from the city spending a weekend in rural Hudson Landing, is accused of murdering a local white girl. Both teens and adults narrate the poems, which reveal the prejudices simmering beneath the surface of a seemingly sleepy town. Teens will easily relate to the strongly felt emotions behind the words." – Horn Book Awards: Quick Picks for Young Adults, 2000 – Recommended Books for Reluctant Young Readers A Book for the Teen Age, 2000, 2001, 2002 - New York Public Library Book Excerpts: Click here to read excerpts from Foreign Exchange |
