“Outsiders” S. E. HINTON
Good book
Five stars
The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The book tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a niebor hood in which he believes that he is an outsider. Ponyboy and his two brothers —Darry, who is 20, and Sodapop, who is 16, have recently lost their parents in a car wreck. The boys are greasers, a class term that refers to the young men on the East Side, the poor side of town.

The story opens with Pony walking home alone from a movie. He is stopped by a gang of Socs who beats him up. The Socs badly injure and threaten to kill Ponyboy; however, some of his gang happen upon the scene and run the Socs off. This sets the tone for the rest of the story, because the event tells the person a fight between these two groups will occur. The next night Pony and two other gang members, Dallas and Johnny Cade, go to a drive-in movie. There they meet Cherry Valance and her friend Marcia, who have left their Soc boyfriends at the drive-in because the boys were drinking. Dally leaves after giving the girls a hard time, but another greaser, Two-Bit, joins Pony and Johnny. The boys offer to walk the girls home after the movie, but along the way, the girls' boyfriends reappear and threaten to fight the greasers. Cherry stops the fight from happening, and the girls leave with their boyfriends. Pony and Johnny go to a vacant lot to hang out before heading home.
They fall asleep, and when Johnny wakes Pony up it's 2 a.m. Pony runs home, because the time is way past his curfew, and Darry is waiting up. He is furious with Pony and, in the heat of the moment, he hits him. Pony runs out of the house and returns to the lot to find Johnny. Pony wants to run away, but instead they go to the park to cool off before heading back home. The socs boys show up at the park. Ponyboy and Johnny seek out Dally for help in running away to avoid being arrested for Bob's murder. He gives them $50 and directions to a hideout outside of town. They run away and live in a church for a long time. They bleached their hair and cut it. The church burnt down when a couple of kids where going around messing with the stuff in the church. Without thinking, Pony and Johnny race inside and rescue the kids. As they are handing the kids outside to Dally, the burning roof collapses. Pony barely escapes, but a piece of timber falls on Johnny, burning him badly and breaking his back. The boys, now viewed as heroes, are taken via ambulance back to town, where Pony reunites with his brothers. Johnny dies of his injuries. Dally is overcome with grief, and he robs a grocery store. He flees the police and calls the gang from a telephone booth, asking them to pick him up in the vacant lot and take him to a hiding place. The police chase Dally to the lot, and as the gang watches, Dally pulls a "black object" from his waistband and the officers shoot him.
Ponyboy writes the book of people like Dallas because , Dallas was one of a kind. And the gang was so close and they all were devastated. His teacher had the class write a book or essay . So Ponyboy wrote about that.

I loved this book! I hope many others read this book.