Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Written in verse, this tour-de-force follows a boy whose brother was just shot and killed.  As he takes the elevator down from his apartment, after having retrieved his brother’s gun, he is met at each floor by ghosts of others in his family who have also died by gunshot; his uncle, a girl he knew at a playground, his father, even the young man who killed his father, and his brother.  They all ask him why he thinks he needs a gun.  And it ends with that question still open.

This book won honors from Newbery, Correta Scott King, Prinz, and won the Walter Dean Myers Award and The Edgar for Best Young Adult Fiction.