Review: Beyond Broken Pencils - Julie C. Gilbert

Review: Beyond Broken Pencils - Julie C. Gilbert - August 2018

I was twelve years old when Dylan and Eric walked into Columbine High School and changed everything. The date April 20, 1999 became seared into my generation's consciousness. For my thirteenth birthday, my aunty gave me a book that would profoundly shape how I understood that tragedy: Rachel's Tears, the diary of Rachel Scott, one of the students killed that day. Rachel had written about sensing she wouldn't have a future, words that haunt me still.

As someone who endured bullying throughout my school years, I understood something complicated and uncomfortable: I could see how the bullied might snap, how they might overpower those who made their lives unbearable. When you're a teenager, trapped in what feels like an endless cycle of torment, life can seem genuinely hopeless. Coming from a country where guns aren't readily available, I've found myself drawn to true crime, particularly school shootings not in a macabre way, but from a place of trying to understand. Books like Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes and Jennifer Brown's The Hate List have become touchstones for me, exploring the complexity of these tragedies beyond simple narratives of good and evil.

Julie C. Gilbert's Beyond Broken Pencils joins these essential works. The novel takes us into the life of Ian Foster, following him through a single devastating day as he executes a list of victims that includes even his own family. But Julie C. Gilbert doesn't stop at the shooting itself she shows us the aftermath through the eyes of survivors, including Ian's sister, who must somehow continue living in the wreckage her brother created.

Told through multiple perspectives, the novel unfolds from beginning to end of that terrible day. As the cover promises, this is genuinely "a school shooting tale of heartbreak and healing." Julie C. Gilbert captures both the destruction and the painstaking work of putting lives back together. She doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable questions or offer easy answers about why these tragedies happen.

For readers like me, who've carried Columbine with us for decades, who remember where we were when we heard the news, Beyond Broken Pencils offers something vital: a compassionate, unflinching examination of how violence ripples outward, shattering not just lives but entire communities. It's a difficult read, but an important one , one that Julie C. Gilbert reminds us that behind every statistic is a person, a family, a future that will never be.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4oz2Fip