52 pages • 1 hour read
Jason ReynoldsLong Way Down
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Paired Texts & Other Resources
Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.
Recommended Texts for Pairing
- Reynolds’ novel is a more traditional narrative approach to similar thematic content.
- Ghost on SuperSummary
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
- Acevedo’s National Book Award winner traces a young woman’s love of slam poetry in Harlem.
- The Poet X on SuperSummary
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
- Woodson’s novel also uses poetic forms to trace a very different Black experience of her upbringing in the American South and Brooklyn.
- a useful companion piece when teaching about the diversity of lived Black experience in America
- Brown Girl Dreaming on SuperSummary
Other Student Resources
In ‘Long Way Down,’ the Ghosts of Gun Violence Chill a Plan for Revenge
- David Greene’s interview of Jason Reynolds provides key insights into the author’s method and close association with the themes of the book.
- touches on Toxic Masculinity and Vulnerability and Cycles of Violence
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