On My Honor

This book is a Newberry Honor book and also on the Challenged Book List. I am posting this as a Challenged Book.

Exposition: This story takes place over the course of one day. It starts out early in the day when two friends, Tony and Joel, decide to go for a bike ride out to the bluffs. Tony has grand ideas of scaling the bluffs while Joel is a much more timid soul. He asks his father if he can go, pleading inside that his father will say no. However, reluctantly the father agrees and has Joel commit that they will bike straight there and back. On his honor, he tells him.

Conflict: As the two boys bike toward the bluffs, Tony decides to take a detour. He tells Joel he would rather swim in the river now. Joel, conflicted between the promise he made to his father, and the relief of not having to scale the bluffs, decides he will join Tony.

Rising Action: Before diving into the river the boys get in a verbal argument resulting in a bet to swim to a sandbar out in the distance. Once they set out Joel can hear Tony splashing behind him. But when Joel arrives at the sandbar Tony is nowhere to be seen.

Climax: After searching himself and flagging down help, Joel realizes Tony has drowned. He must go back home alone.

Falling Action: We quickly realize that Joel has no intention of telling his parents or Tony's parents about what happened. He is pained as he goes about the rest of his day including his daily paper route.

Resolution: When the police arrive after Tony's parents grew concerned about his absence, the truth finally comes out. Everyone is devastated .Both father and son realize they will have to live with Tony's death the rest of their lives.

One of the literary elements this book has throughout is the tension between the characters. Even the two boys had tension in their relationship, getting into several verbal arguments and disagreements. Then there's the fact that Joel dared Tony to swim to the sandbar which results in internal tension and conflict. It is definately a book I did not want to put down. The author also gives Joel's guilt a sense of smell. After Joel returns home and showers he still "couldn't cover the stench of the river clinging to hs skin" and "as he rubbed his skin, the smell rose in his nostrils again, the dead-fish smell of the river."

Bauer M. D. (1986). On my honor. New York: Clarion Books.