violence

Gangsta Rap

School, what school? My name is X-Ray-X So be careful how you flex I used to freestyle in me bedroom But me daddy got me vex The teacher kicked me out of the classroom Now I’m rapping in The Rex.

Ray has trouble at home and trouble at school. It’s the last straw for everyone when Ray and his friends Prem and Tyrone are permanently suspended. But they know what they want, more than most, perhaps. Their headmaster decides to give them a second chance, a chance to live their dream of forming a rap group. Through a specialized social program, the boys are taught the business of the music industry, what it takes to record an album, and how to lay down a track. Within weeks they have become the Positive Negatives, and within a few months they have signed a record deal and are on their way to the top. But their dream soon becomes a nightmare as violence escalates around them. Suddenly, not only their careers but their very lives are at stake. The Positive Negatives are determined to prove that you don’t need to be a gangster to be a great rapper.

Teen’s Top 10 (Awards)

Blade: Playing Dead

bladeNobody knows the city like Blade. You have to when you’re on your own, when you can’t trust anyone, when you’ve got a past you need to hide. Blade is practically invisible, perfectly alone, living only by his wits—just the way he likes it. Until the day a chance encounter sends his world crashing down around him and he finds himself on the run again. Yet he’s not alone this time. Suddenly he’s got Becky and her daughter, Jaz, weighing him down. But is he running from his past or from Becky’s? Blade knows he should drop these two, but he can’t. With people depending on him, he’ll need to find a way to outsmart the thugs who are hot on both of their heels, lurking around every corner.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

Rose Blanche

A young German girl watches as the streets of her town fill with soldiers and tanks. Then, one day, she follows a truck into the woods and discovers a secret.