Ok. So The Wave. A short little book, turns out is a novelization, one of those books written from a screenplay kinda deals. A tv screenplay at that. An after-school special kinda tv screenplay, even. So you would think that it would be really bad. Especially since it was written by a guy named Morton Rhue and published in 1981.But the deal is, Morton Rhue is really Todd Strasser, one of the best YA writers around and The Wave tv movie was based on the true story of a teacher's experiment called The Third Wave. In 2008 it became a theatrical movie. In the book a young teacher named Ben Ross starts a lesson on Nazi Germany by showing his students a film. After his students view the film, they can't believe that the Germans could have been so gullible. They make statements like, "I would never follow some Nazi!" and "That would never happen again!"
Mr. Ross decides to try a little experiment to prove that the students are more susceptible to group-think than they realize. Quickly the experiment gets out of control, showing just how much fascism appeals to us even as we might deny it.
This is scary book. But a really good one.
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