Kathryn's Inbox

The Blackboard Jungle is a novel that is best remembered for its film adaption (starring Glen Ford and Sidney Poitier in his breakout role,) that started riots in various parts of the world were it was shown, while author Evan Hunter would later find fame writing crime novels under the alias Ed McBain. (Evan Hunter was the novelists name after he changed it legally from Salvatore Albert Lombino. Throughout his long career he would also use several other aliases.) But what is surprising about this book, first published in the early 1950s, is just how relevant some of the themes of teenage delinquency are today and what little has changed. The novel tells the story of Richard Dadier, a World War Two Veteran who has recently qualified as a secondary school teacher and now must spend a year teaching at a vocational school in New York. The boys at the school are rough, tough and basically illiterate and most of the teachers are just trying to survive their day job. Initially Dadi...