Killing Mr. Griffin

Gr 8 Up–Mr. Griffin is a disliked high school English teacher. Mark persuades his classmates Jeff, David, Betsy, and Sue to kidnap their teacher to scare him into giving them high grades for inferior work. The students kidnap Mr. Griffin, tie him up, blindfold him, and drive him to the secluded mountains to leave him there. Their plan soon backfires when Mr. Griffin dies of a heart attack. The teens find themselves in a chain of events that lead them from one violent act to another. They learn that they had judged Mr. Griffin at the surface level and had not thought of him as a real person with a reason for his actions: a deep concern for the students’ education. Class discussion would lend itself well to the topic of peer pressure, showing the importance of making one’s own choices with full consideration of others. The mystery format of the novel incorporates characterization, suspense, and foreshadowing to allow the story to unfold, even though readers might figure out some of the details ahead of time. Although written in the late 1970s, Duncan’s classic will keep readers on the edge of their seats and delivers plot twist after plot twist. With multiple points of view, this suspense novel gives teens a full scope of each character’s mental state and motivation.