Monster

Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is jailed and tried for his alleged role in a deadly robbery. To make sense of the courtroom and the way others see him, the aspiring filmmaker records the proceedings as a screenplay, intercut with his private journal. As witnesses offer competing accounts, Steve confronts the distance between legal guilt, public judgment, and his own understanding of himself. Walter Dean Myers's novel won the first Michael L. Printz Award and was later adapted as a feature film.