Young Writers Society

And now I'm in a sorrowful stupor. It was required reading for school, but I enjoyed it, but the ending murdered me emotionally. I'm going to be sad for a week now...

Anyway, the book is written by Daniel Keyes, and is about a mentally disabled 32-year-old named Charlie Gordon. When he is selected for testing for a special experiment, he undergoes an operation that supposedly increases the 'IQ capacity' of the brain. (The first experiment was performed on a mouse named Algernon, whose IQ increased greatly.) Anyway, over time, Charlie becomes more and more intelligent, and eventually surpasses the intelligence of his own therapists and the scientists that he works with studying the experiment. There is a problem. Charlie's increased intelligence surpasses his emotional growth, causing an inner-struggle that you'll just have to read about to understand. An even greater problem arises when Algernon, the mouse first experimented on, begins to show strange and erratic behavior. If the mouse is becoming like this, what will become of Charlie?

This is a superb book, and will tug at your heart many times. I give it a 9/10.

(I give this a PG-13 rating for language and some described sexual scenes.)

I liked the book.We had to read it in 7th grade. I cried at the end. We also watched the movie but I personally liked the book better

Wow. 7th graders reading Algernon? That might be a little rough for a 7th grader...

Anyway, yeah. I cried too.

EDIT: Wait a sec...7th grader= 13. I forgot. xD I'm 14 and in the 9th grade, so I confuse ages and grades and stuff.

I've never read it, but DD says it was wonderful, so I'll have to read it. It seems very good.

My sister was Alice in that play this summer!!!!! Talk about coincidence...
I've seen the movie, but haven't read the book. I'll prolly have to check it out from the library. I was sad for like 3 days after I saw their play. They did soooo good on it...

I really want to read Flowers for Algernon, I always hear that it's a wonderful book, and I really want to read it, but whenever I finally find the book it's the Spanish version. In my school library, they only have the Spanish version and then at my local library they don't have it.

I'm in 8th grade and I just finished a part of the book that was in my literature book but I've been told that the actual book is much different, From the small part I read, or rather listened to (we had a tape that played for us) it seemed really good but mildly depressing. 8/10 but once I read the actual book, that might change.

I read it just for fun- and loved it, too. Good stuff. I second the recommendation, if you haven't read it yet.

I read that a long time ago. It was pretty good, we had to write a huge paper on it though.

And isn't it more like a short story than a book?

Naw. It's a book...

It's like fifteen pages long. Unless we read an excerpt or something. Which we probably did. It was one of the many stories crammed into our english book...

If it was in an english book, then it was definitely an excerpt. The novel is about 300 pages long.

I just finished reading "Flowers For Algernon" yesterday for my 8th grade english class....personally it was my favorite story we have been assigned all year! It was very sad but I still think it was a great story and taught an awesome lesson! Flowers For Algernon also made me realize some of unnessicary cruelity that goes on with some people. Ever since I read it I saw noticed some of the things my friends said that would be unnecessiary that i wouldn't have noticed before! Anywyas...I thought it was Awesome!!!