Sura may be only 12, but the ugliness and brutality he witnesses each day inside the juvenile detention center, where he is serving a six-month sentence for robbery, has made him old and wary. Some of the other juveniles in detention are frightening in their cruelty. So, too, are some of the adults; supervisors like the one who humiliates Coly Jo, Sura's patch (cell) mate, and tries to break his spirit. "I don't cry and I'm not scared or nothing,"Sura writes his mother, telling her not to worry. But Deacon Bob Fly, the caring counselor whom Sura sees, thinks Sura's been blocking his fear and other feelings for far too long. In Adam Rapp's shocking, stunning novel Sura, an adolescent boy of the street, is a sensitive observer of a closed and frightening place that has rules and language all its own. This insider language may be a barrier to some readers, but there is poetry in Sura's words that transcends literal meaning, and the emotional weight of Sura's story is heightened by this language of crudity and grace. A grim and hard-edged novel concludes with a fragile but real sense of hope for Sura's future. (Age 15 and older)

Clipping hoodies changed Sura's life. He's shipped off to Hamstock, a juvenile detention center that's worse than most. At the Stock they don't. try to keep juvies till they reform. They just keep guys till they feel like letting them go.

Sura and his patchmate, a kid named Coly Jo, look out for each other and try to evade the Stock's sadistic games. But things turn bad fast for Coly Jo, and Sura helplessly watches his friend's descent into hell, determined to escape with his own body and spirit intact -- if he can.

Thirteen-year old Sura--intelligent, reckless, sensitive, and adrift--is serving a six-month sentence at Hamstock Juvenille Detention Center. Coping wiht the brutal pressures of life inside "the Stock," Sura helplessly watches his doomed bunkmate, Coly Jo, fall prey to the worst excesses of the prison system, and determines to escape with his own body and spirit intac -- if he can.