Shelby’s Banned Book Reviews: “Nineteen Minutes”

I am proud to offer this space to my daughter, Shelby, who will be writing series of book reviews of banned books. Get in some good trouble, kid! See all of her reviews here.

The 2008 novel Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult was banned 98 times in the 2023-24 school year, and it made the list of the PEN America’s most commonly banned books. According to the Alpine School District in Utah, it reportedly contains “explicit sexual content” and “nudity”. This district also claimed that the novel as a whole “does not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

This harrowing and brutally honest novel tells the story we often overlook: the events leading up to and the aftermath of a violent shooting. It takes place in the small town of Sterling, New Hampshire, covering many different perspectives to show just how complicated this fictional shooting was. 

I don’t even remember my first lockdown drill. It wasn’t some big traumatic moment for me, and it isn’t something my parents remember either. I was probably in kindergarten, and it was likely the same general message as I’m told now during lockdown drills. Locks, lights, out of sight. I roll my eyes everytime the associate principal says those words, but it still repeats in my head like a mantra. The constant threats of school shootings is something that has shaped my childhood, and it’s about as natural to me as a monthly fire drill.

Josie Cormier is a member of the main cast, and she has a deeply interesting perspective that you can’t really hear outside of this book. Josie is addicted to maintaining a specific image, and she’s torn between the shallowness of popularity and her true, compassionate nature. She doesn’t like how her friends treat the unpopular kids, but she never finds the courage to speak up against it, even when it’s against her childhood best friend, Peter Houghton, who ends up being the shooter. Peter is ultimately motivated by the endless bullying he’s experienced throughout his years in school. 

After the shooting takes place, killing multiple of Josie’s friends and her boyfriend, she pleads for things to get back to normal, finding solace in a few of the other popular kids. “He tore a piece of the damp napkin and stuck it in his mouth, then tossed the spitball at the back of an overweight boy who carried the tuba in the school marching band. Oh my God, Josie thought. Nothing’s changed at all. Drew tore off another piece of napkin and rolled it in his palm. “Stop it,” Josie said. “What?” Drew shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to go back to normal.” 

There’s this flawed belief that cliques only exist in 90s coming of age movies, but as someone who’s a current junior in high school, I can confidently say that clique culture is alive and well. I usually find myself drawn to the theater, music, and art kids… but I’m very aware that I’m moderately popular. When I was younger, it was a different story. When I read about Josie’s character, I’m brought back to this single moment in 3rd grade music class. One of the main bullies in our class, my good friend, was picking on a student who’s far less popular. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and I knew I wasn’t going to speak up. The difference about that day was that I chimed in. I don’t remember what I said, but I know it wasn’t nice. I knew from the moment I said it that I shouldn’t have, but everyone laughed and the day continued. That moment still haunts me to this day. I see this kid in a ton of my advanced classes, and when I look at him, I can’t understand why I felt the need to say whatever I did.

People still pick on this kid and tons of others like him. I don’t think it’s okay, but unless they’re picking on one of my friends, I usually keep my head down and stay quiet. Doesn’t that make me worse than the bullies themselves? I wonder, in Nineteen Minutes, if somebody would have stood up for Peter, would he have done what he did? I think Josie and I are in the same boat.

Above all, Lacy Houghton is the most compelling character in this book. She’s a completely average woman; a midwife, true empath, and Peter’s mother. Lacy spends most of the book attempting to grapple with the facts of what her son has done. “What if it was something Lacy had said or done… or not said or done… that had brought Peter to that point? Could you hate your son for what he had done, and still love him for who he had been?”

When we as a society look at what we call bad people, we always want a cause. We want a broken home, a different chemical in their brain, an abusive past. It doesn’t excuse their actions, but at least it explains it. We view school shooters as monsters, but Peter is shockingly human. He comes from a stable family. An educated father and deeply loving mother. The unfortunate truth is that, in some cases, that doesn’t make a difference. “Everyone, Lacy thought, is somebody’s son.”

I didn’t grow up around guns. No one in my family hunts, and I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve even touched a gun. I know my perspective is different from others, but I’ve found myself very frustrated with America’s inability to enact lasting gun reform laws. I mean, you’ve seen it on the news! A school shooting occurs, everyone sends their thoughts and prayers, but when is that not enough? 

A few months ago, I told a family member I was constantly scared to go to school. Just as she gave me this funny look, asking why, I completely lost it. I live in constant fear of a school shooting. Yesterday, when the intercom beeped an hour before school ended, the class went entirely silent. Announcements happen everyday at the start of 3rd hour, and besides that, they only ever use the intercom during homecoming week. I glanced at my phone in my back, wondering if I would need to text my parents that I loved them… and a few members from our Unity Club spoke, giving a thoughtful tribute to Women’s History Month. I sighed in relief and moved on from the whole ordeal instantly. 

If you look at the facts, school shootings are not an issue in any other country on the planet. The kicker? The countries with the least amount of violent shootings also have the more strict gun regulation. According to the Sandy Hook Promise, each day 12 children die from gun violence in America. When will the safety of our children come above that of our firearms?

The value of Nineteen Minutes and other stories like it is irrefutable. These are stories that need to be told, especially since they’re occuring more often than ever. In reference to attempted censorship of Nineteen Minutes, author Jodi Picoult states, “Having the most banned book in the country is not a badge of honor – it’s a call for alarm. Nineteen Minutes is banned not because it’s about a school shooting, but the because of a single page that depicts a date rape and uses anatomically correct words for the human body. It is not gratuitous or salacious, and it is not – as the book banners claim – porn. In fact, hundreds of kids have told me that reading Nineteen Minutes stopped them from committing a school shooting, or showed them they were not alone in feeling isolated. My book, and the ten thousand others that have been pulled off school library shelves this year, give kids a tool to deal with an increasingly divided and difficult world. These book banners aren’t helping children. They are harming them.”