SNOOP BY GORDON KORMAN
A small moment of distraction has big consequences for Carter. On a ski trip with his father and brother, he pulls out the phone he was supposed to leave at home and misses the moment his brother loses control on the hill and crashes into him. The crash leaves Carter with two broken legs.
Stuck at home for weeks with both legs in casts, Carter is confined to a wheelchair and attending school online. He is physically cut off from his classmates and psychologically struggling with the feeling that life is moving on without him. What starts as harmless curiosity, checking live police camera feeds around his town, slowly turns into something more complicated. Before he knows it, Carter is watching classmates who don’t know they are being watched, noticing strange patterns no one else seems to see, and getting pulled into a situation that feels increasingly dangerous. The question is not just what Carter is seeing anymore, but whether he should be seeing it at all.
Carter’s internal struggle between doing the right thing and avoiding trouble, between telling the truth and protecting himself, will feel painfully familiar to many readers. Watching him navigate those choices gives readers a window into the kinds of decisions many middle schoolers face, or soon will, and invites them to think through the consequences.
What Gordon Korman does so brilliantly in Snoop is take mature themes such as privacy, surveillance, trust, moral responsibility, and isolation, and make them accessible and safe for middle school readers without ever watering them down. Korman is known for creating stories that kids want to read, while quietly inviting them to think about complicated questions. In Snoop, those questions include: Who can you trust? What do you owe other people? When does curiosity cross a line? The story is fast paced and gripping, but those questions stay may stay with the reader long after the final page.
Overall, Snoop is a compelling middle grade read that balances tension, character, and thoughtful reflection in equal measure that one that I highly recommend.