by Gennifer Choldenko
ages 10 and up
Dial, September 3, 2009, ISBN 978-0-803-73460-9

Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be when you live on an island with a billion birds, a ton of bird crap, a few dozen rifles, machine guns and automatics and 278 of America’s worst criminals—“the cream of the criminal crop” as one of our felons likes to say. The convicts on Alcatraz are rotten to the core, crazy in the head, and as slippery as eels in axle grease.

And then there’s me. Moose Flanagan. I live on Alcatraz along with 24 other kids and one more on the way.  My father works as a prison guard and an electrician in the cell house up top. I live where most of us “civilians” do in 64 building which is dockside on the East side of Alcatraz—a base hit from the mobster Al Capone.

Not many 12-year-old boys can say that. Not many kids can say when their toilet is stopped up, they get Seven Fingers, the Ax Murderer, to help them out, either ...

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