The Knife and The Butterfly
The Knife and the Butterfly
By Ashley Hope Perez
Reading Level
Lexile: 790
Length
216 pages
Representation
The protagonist of The Knife and the Butterfly is a young Salvadorian gang member. The text portrays him as complex and is generally successful at avoiding cliche. The other main character is a young white woman who is also treated with humanity and sensitivity by the author.
Appropriate Content
This book contains gang violence, sex, swearing and drug use. The publisher (Lerner Books) recommends this book for students age 14+. There is no Common Sense Media review of this book.
Engagement
The Knife and the Butterfly throws the reader in right in the middle of the action from page one, and continues at a fairly rapid pace. Some readers may be confused by the shifts in time from chapter to chapter, but they are clearly marked "Then" and "Now" on the first page of each chapter. You can read the beginning of the book on the publisher's website.
Substance
The Knife and the Butterfly provides opportunities for book club groups to discuss the ways that people from seemingly different worlds are deeply connected to one another. It also opens doors for students to discuss family, relationships and support networks.
Summary
Summary Provided by Lerner Books
After a marijuana-addled brawl with a rival gang, 16-year-old Azael wakes up to find himself surrounded by a familiar set of concrete walls and a locked door. Juvie again, he thinks. But he can't really remember what happened or how he got picked up. He knows his MS13 boys faced off with some punks from Crazy Crew. There were bats, bricks, chains. A knife. But he can't remember anything between that moment and when he woke behind bars.
Azael knows prison, and something isn't right about this lockup. No phone call. No lawyer. No news about his brother or his homies. The only thing they make him do is watch some white girl in some cell. Watch her and try to remember.
Lexi Allen would love to forget the brawl, would love for it to disappear back into the Xanax fog it came from. And her mother and her lawyer hope she chooses not to remember too much about the brawl—at least when it's time to testify.
Lexi knows there's more at stake in her trial than her life alone, though. She's connected to him, and he needs the truth. The knife cut, but somehow it also connected.
Book Club Materials:
The Knife and the Butterfly: Book Club Agenda
The Knife and the Butterfly: Publisher's Discussion Guide
The Knife and the Butterfly: Discussion Questions
The Knife and the Butterfly: Related Articles
The Knife and the Butterfly is based on an incident that occurred in Houston in June, 2006. Below are some news articles from that incident.
Butterfly and Knife: A tragic day, years in the making, Houston Chronicle