I don’t know your freshmen, but I, too, would have reservations about teaching this book with the freshmen at our school. There are more and more books with similar themes. You could look at Dear Martin by Nic Stone (not as rich, but a shorter and easier text). I’m looking into teaching this one with some sophomores and (slowly) working on some Teachers Pay Teachers resources as well. You could also look into Swing by Kwame Alexander. It just came out last week, and I haven’t read it, but our librarian who was on the advanced reading team said it deals with similar issued to THUG, but focuses in before the event rather than after. It’s written in verse too, so that may be more material to work with. In the future, maybe you could do one of these texts in conjunction with the THUG movie? You could also perhaps incorporate some THUG excerpts (the scene between Starr and Big Mav discussing systemic racism comes to mind). Also, you could check out the book How I Resist (an anthology) for some supplemental text. Oh! And you can still keep a few copies of THUG in your classroom library for those more mature readers (the ones who can’t handle it will weed themselves out after seeing how big the book is!).

I would love to know what you end up doing!

I teach THUG to seniors