Kent State

Description

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio (Abrams Comic Arts, 2020; ISBN 9781683358619) addresses the 1970 Kent State shootings. The 288-page book, which is heavily researched and includes copious footnotes at the end, is a dramatic recreation of those four bloody days in 1970 that resulted in four students being shot and killed by Ohio National Guard troops. It profiles each of the four students who were killed, telling their stories through the days leading up to May 4th, using personal details gathered through interviews with friends and oral histories from the May 4th special collection and archives amongst other sources. It has won a number of accolades, including an **Alex Award** from the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) division of the American Library Association. and the **2021 Eisner Award** for best reality-based work, the **2021 Ringo Award** in the same category, and Derf's second Alex Award from the American Library Association.

Description

From Derf Backderf, the bestselling author of My Friend Dahmer, comes the tragic and unforgettable story of the Kent State shootings, told in graphic novel form. Backderf takes us back to the age of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, Woodstock, and the Cold War and explores, in words and images, a scene of tragedy, the campus of Kent State University, where National Guard Troops attacked unarmed protestors and killed four students (Allison Beth Krause, age 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20, and William Knox Schroeder, age 19). On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, 4 students were killed and 9 shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children—a shocking event burned into our national memory. The fatal shootings triggered immediate and massive outrage on campuses around the country. More than 4 million students participated in organized walkouts at hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools, the largest student strike in the history of the United States at that time. It was a day that shocked the nation and helped turn the tide of public opinion against America’s war in Vietnam. A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike. Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf has conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart. Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, which published on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, is a moving and troubling story about the bitter price of dissent—as relevant today as it was in 1970.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Kent State: Four Dead in OhioebookAbrams, Inc.2020-01-01
• Kent State: Four Dead in OhioAbrams ComicArts2020-01-01
• Kent StatePaperbackCA ET LA2020-09-10
• Kent StateAstiberri,2022-01-01
• Kent StatePaperbackFINESTRES2022-01-26
• Kent StateAbrams, Inc.2023-01-01