The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier takes place in a small town. The main character is a boy named Jason, who finds himself not quite fitting in with his peers. He enjoys spending time with his younger sister as well as a young girl named Alicia. He doesn't have a lot of friends his own age and struggles to connect with others. One day, Alicia is brutally murdered and needing a suspect, the police decide upon Jason who was the last person to see her alive. They call in an expert interrogator, Trent, to get a confession out of him. Trent's career and the case rest on this confession, despite the fact that Jason didn't actually kill her.
I thought this could be a good choice to teach in a classroom. I don't think that the difficulty level was necessarily high, but I could envision a lot of activities to do while reading this. It had some excellent vocabulary words to teach to students, some scenes that would be interesting to act out and interpret, and many morals and themes to delve into. The subject matter was also very interesting, and I think students would be able to connect well to Jason. All in all, a good novel to have in a classroom, I just wouldn't use it as if it was an extremely challenging novel.
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