Today's horrible news—a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., left 20 children and eight adults dead—has prompted a flood of anguish over school violence and its underlying causes. Nine recent releases and older titles from the library here at Education Week offer perspectives on school shootings from the post-Columbine era.
The Columbine School Shooting by Louise I. Gerdes (Greenhaven Press, 2012). Part of Greenhaven's Perspectives on Modern World History series, this book attempts to explain the Columbine High School tragedy, its causes, and its aftermath to young adult readers.
Reclaiming School in the Aftermath of Trauma: Advice Based on Experience edited by Carolyn Lunsford Mears (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Mears, a parent at Columbine, titled her EdD dissertation, Experiences of Columbine Parents: Finding a Way to Tomorrow. Here she expands the scope of her research to explore how traumatic incidents from shootings to natural disasters can affect schools.
Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters by Peter Langman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Langman identifies and analyzes three types of young people who engage in large-scale school violence: psychopathic shooters, psychotic shooters, and traumatized shooters.
Books, Blackboards, and Bullets: School Shootings and Violence in America by Marcel Lebrun (Roman & Littlefield, 2009). An account of school violence research and preventative measures, written by an educator and former counselor.
