There are ten plays that feature teenagers, all of them written by award-winning authors of novels for young adults (A. R. Carter; S. B. Pfeffer; L. Namioka; C. Forshay-Lunsford; D. Malmgren; J. D. Okimoto; O. Sebestyen; S. Asher; W. D. Myers; R. F. Brancato). They were written to be performed on the stage or in a classroom.
Among the one-act plays in this collection we can find a high school girl who has tried to run away from problems at home and must find the strength within herself to carry on; in another play a teenage boy feels torn apart by his parents' problems. On the lighter side, there's disaster-prone Ben Cameron, who has just set a new record by flunking his driving test before his car even leaves the lot, and Cassie Tate, whose unreasonable fears keep her confined to her room in spite of everyone's efforts to lure, bully, trick, and scare her out. CAGES will force readers to think about how we let others determine our destinies.
And for something really different, readers will be able to participate in the outcome of the final play in this collection by writing their own ending. ( )