Jason Reynolds' "Long Way Down" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

Brief description of Long Way Down

Will Holloman is fifteen and sets the scene for his gripping story: his brother Shawn was shot dead two days earlier while buying soap for their mother who suffers from painful eczema. In Will’s world there are 3 Rules:  Don't cry. Don't snitch. Always get revenge.

Will is going to follow rule #3. With a gun, Shawn’s gun, shoved into the back waistband of his jeans, Will enters their building’s elevator on the eighth floor on his journey to confront Shawn’s killer. As the elevator stops on each floor, someone (a ghost or a projection from Will’s conscious) connected to his brother enters the elevator and shares with Will their back-story which differs from the story Will thought he knew. Each floor offers evidence against Will’s plans for revenge.

A Long Way Down is about choice, decision-making, agency and ultimately, hope.

Jason Reynolds is a Carnegie winner and a critically acclaimed, multi award-winning writer and poet. He has just completed his role as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature in the US, and has written several books including All American Boys, Boy in the Black Suit, Long Way Down, Oxygen Mask and the Run series.

Awards

• Shortlisted for CILIP Carnegie medal
• A Newbery Honor Book
• A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
• A Printz Honor Book
• A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)
• A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
• Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award
• An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
• Parents' Choice Gold Award Winner

Distinctive features of Long Way Down

• Like Sarah Crossan’s wonderful verse novel One, Jason Reynolds has tapped into compelling content, a fast pace and building empathy and understanding 
• The free-verse novel style and layout including space enables the reader to quickly flick to the next page and propel through the 320 pages
• First person narrative from the perspective of fifteen-year-old Will Holloman
• Will’s journey in the lift takes just over 67 seconds from 9.08.02 am on the seventh floor until 9.09.09 am on the Lobby floor.
• At each floor someone (a friend, a relative, an enemy)  enters the elevator – are they ghosts or projections from Will’s conscience?
• The narrative is told in short, fierce, staccato verse 
• Occasional monochromatic pencil illustrations by Chris Priestley
• There is also a graphic novel version.

Ways to use Long Way Down in the classroom

Think about what you intend to achieve with this text and what you want your students to take away after the unit.

Some possibilities:

• To get your disengaged students reading
• Provide some close reading tasks that build skills but do not intrude on the joy of having read a full book
• Explore the landscape, relevance and purpose of Youth Culture through Long Way Down and a selection of other texts
• Provide a wide reading challenge across different forms and style e.g. verse novel, graphic novels and include Long Way Down in the selection
• An author study of Jason Reynolds

Ways In

View one of these interviews before reading Long Way Down and consider the others after reading.

• This interview about Long Way Down includes a valuable summary and is also a powerful treatise on adolescent disengagement and the choices that must be made.
• In this interview Jason Reynolds talks about Long Way Down and its capacity to get inside the character of Will and raise awareness about the challenges facing many young men.

Another option would be to broaden the initial discussion about the challenges for society when adolescents are disengaged, disenfranchised and angry. This has been evident across the world and within Australia. Consider a slide show of images including Cronulla riots, Neo-Nazi rallies in Melbourne and the March 2024 Wakeley attack in Western Sydney.  Discuss with students the importance of awareness as to why this behaviour occurs and the importance of building empathy and understanding. Literature is one way we build this empathy and understanding and writers like Jason Reynolds are committed to this purpose.

Reading the text

Consider allocating time in the classroom for students to read the full story. Not only will this be an affirmation of the students to complete a full novel but a celebration of the power of the story.

Post-reading possibilities

1. The exposition establishes the backstory about Shawn and his world and the impact of his death. It is a poignant and moving introduction. Re-read the first 50 pages and students choose 5 pages which build their understanding of this backstory. 
   
   Highlight the key language choices Reynolds has made to create this poignancy and identify the stylistic device. 
   
   Share this analysis and create a document for students with the different examples.
   
   
2. Using the collated analysis students to respond to this question:
   
   The exposition is the description or explanation of background information within a work of literature. Exposition can cover characters and their relationship to one another, the setting or time and place of events, as well as any relevant ideas, details, or historical context. It can also establish the specific style of a work.
   
   In what ways does the exposition in Long Way Down establish the key concerns and style of the text? In your response make close reference to the shared class document for specific examples. Write about 700-800 words.
   
   For example:

Other ideas for close study

• The time stamp as a frame for the narrative
• The elevator levels as separate vignettes/chapters to build the story’s complexity
• Unconventional and creative layout e.g. pp 14,51,60
• Recurring motif of L for “lobby” and “loser”, cologne, lost tooth
• Anagrams
• Evocative similes to link images
• The effect of short sentences and short lines
• Effective use of poetic conventions: alliteration, repetition, metaphor
• Revelations of each “person” who joins Will in the lift

Ideas and themes explored

• Neighbourhoods and belonging
• Codes of groups
• Gangs
• Brothers
• Revenge
• Violence
• Gun culture
• Conscience
• Choices and decisions
• Justice and mercy

Taking the text further

Form small groups and choose three favourite consecutive pages for a prepared reading to the class.

• Allocate different lines to each speaker
• Rehearse the reading
• Consider some sound effects to enhance the presentation eg bongo drums or other musical instruments or hand clapping, 
• Consider all wearing e.g. baseball caps, football jumper, jacket
• Present the prepared reading to the class
• If your students are reluctant to present live, consider filming the groups

Responses

In what ways did this group reading build your own understanding of Long Way Down?

Which two groups engaged you most in their presentation and what was it that added to this engagement?

Play this interview with Jason Reynolds

It is a long interview so visiting specific “chapters” is useful.

00:00 – Opening 
00:34 - Growing up in Oxon Hill 
00:58 - Home Life
07:34 - Mother Isabell Reynolds as Jason’s North Star
14:20 - School Life and Inspiring Teachers 
19:20 - Music and Poetry 
21:31 - Motivation for Writing 
24:46 - Connecting with Young Readers 
27:53 - The Banned “All American Boys” Book 
32:35 - Importance of Storytelling

Watch the opening 2 minutes which explores Reynolds growing up in Maryland, Washington in the 1980s and the different times and experiences of this time.

• What were three insights that Jason provides that really struck you as insightful about Reynolds and growing up.

Fast forward to (14:20) School Life and Inspiring Teachers or click on this separate chapter.
Reynolds’s recollections about his teacher Mr Williams are inspiring in the importance of mentors, teachers, people who ground us and shape our own moral code.

At 19:20 Reynolds discusses music and poetry

Student writing: Choose one of these topics and write 500 words.

• Use the first person
• Be sure to add specific detail
• Choose verse or prose or combine both

Topics:

1. A person who influenced you and was important to your development.
   Consider: a teacher, sport coach, grandparent, neighbour, friend, mother, father, brother, sister.
2. Discovering a song or singer which inspired you and remained significant to you.
3. A book or film which spoke to you and what it was that resonated with you so much. 

Viewing and responding to SBS interactive documentary on the Cronulla Riots

This event occurred in 2005,before your students were born but it remains a significant event in Australia’s psyche and was the first mass event in Australia that was ignited and fuelled by text messaging. It was also the first event where police used mobile phone tracking to arrest and charge perpetrators. 

This introduction from SBS is an effective summary and reminder:

On December 11, 2005 a riot occurred on Cronulla Beach in Sydney's south targeting men of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’.

Phrases like “100% Aussie Pride” were scrawled in the sand while slogans such as “We grew here you flew here” became a new source of national shame. In the following days, Lebanese-Australian youth rose up, responding swiftly in a series of retaliations.

Leading up to these events, 270,000 text messages were sent and received to mobilise the rioters and those who retaliated.

This interactive documentary explores these events. A 60-minute video is the springboard to explore a wall of content that adds further depth and perspective to the themes that fuelled the infamous Cronulla Riots.

Watch the untold stories. Investigate the themes. Explore the riots in an entirely new, immersive way.

Short film: Between the Flags:

If this version is not top quality, contact Screen Australia.

It is 7 minutes long and a clever and accessible short film:

How many rioters does it take to start a riot? When two guys from opposing sides of conflict are the first arrivals for a beach riot, they are initially unsure of the accepted etiquette. With no mob to guide them and unexpected time to kill, they strike up a conversation. 

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English 7-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Long Way Down is poetry, a verse novel from around the world. It has of cultural, social and gender perspectives, including from popular and youth cultures.
For more recommended texts suitable for Stage 5, explore our Year 9 texts and study guides and Year 10 texts and study guides.

Concepts could include Context • Representation • Connotation, symbol and imagery.

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Reading, viewing and listening to texts

A student uses a range of personal, creative and critical strategies to interpret complex texts EN5-RVL-01

Reading, viewing and listening skills

• Develop a deeper understanding of themes, ideas or attitudes by revisiting and reinterpreting texts to find new meaning

Reading, viewing and listening for meaning

• Analyse the main ideas and thematic concerns represented in texts
• Investigate how layers of meaning are constructed in texts and how this shapes a reader’s understanding and engagement
• Clarify and justify personal responses to texts, explaining how aspects of the text, such as character, genre, tone, salience or voice, position a reader and influence these personal responses

Reading for challenge, interest and enjoyment

• Read increasingly complex texts that challenge thinking, pique interest, enhance enjoyment and provoke a personal response
• Consider how the social, cultural and ethical positions represented in texts represent, affirm or challenge views of the world
• Evaluate experiences of reading by sharing responses to texts
• Evaluate the ways reading texts help us understand ourselves and make connections to others and the world

Reflecting

• Reflect on how reading promotes a broad and balanced understanding of the world and enables students to explore wider universal issues

Understanding and responding to texts A

A student analyses how meaning is created through the use and interpretation of increasingly complex language forms, features and structures EN5-URA-01

Code and convention

• Analyse how language forms, features and structures, specific or conventional to a text’s medium, context, purpose and audience, shape meaning, and experiment with this understanding through written, spoken, visual and multimodal responses

Connotation, imagery and symbol

• Analyse how figurative language and devices can be used to represent complex ideas, thoughts and feelings to contribute to larger patterns of meaning in texts, and experiment with this in own texts

Understanding and responding to texts B

A student evaluates how texts represent ideas and experiences, and how they can affirm or challenge values and attitudes EN5-URB-01

Perspective and context

• Evaluate how texts can position audiences to accept, challenge or reject particular perspectives of the world, and reflect on this in own texts
• Analyse how elements of an author’s personal, cultural and political contexts can shape their perspectives and representation of ideas, including form and purpose
• Appreciate how all communication is a product of cultural context

Argument and authority

• Research, select and sequence appropriate evidence from texts and reliable sources to construct cohesive and authoritative arguments

Expressing ideas and composing texts A

A student crafts personal, creative and critical texts for a range of audiences by experimenting with and controlling language forms and features to shape meaning EN5-ECA-01

Text features

• Use the structural conventions of analytical writing purposefully, including a well-articulated and considered thesis, a sustained and cohesive progression of supporting points, and a rhetorically effective conclusion
• Use the structural conventions of discursive texts purposefully, including the transition between personal and abstract texts, to present complex and nuanced ideas

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023)

Connecting texts