Restart
Gordon Korman (2017)
“What if you woke up and couldn't remember being a terrible person — would you still be one?”
For Students
Because this book asks the hardest question you'll face in middle school and beyond: can people change? Not in a fairy tale way where the bad guy becomes good overnight, but in a real way where someone who hurt people has to figure out how to be different when everyone — including themselves — expects them to stay the same. Chase's story matters because it's not just about bullies. It's about whether any of us are stuck being who we were yesterday.
For Teachers
The multiple-narrator structure makes this ideal for perspective-taking exercises and Socratic discussion. Each narrator's chapter can be assigned to different student groups, creating organic debate about whose perspective is 'right.' The novel supports units on identity, restorative justice, and neuroscience without requiring any single pedagogical approach. It's also one of the rare books that both reluctant readers and advanced readers engage with equally.
Why It Still Matters
Everyone has something in their past they wish they could forget, and everyone knows someone who seems incapable of change. Restart doesn't offer easy answers to either situation. Instead, it suggests that identity is not a fixed state but an ongoing project — that who you were yesterday doesn't have to determine who you are tomorrow, but that changing requires more than just forgetting. The amnesia is a metaphor, but the moral question is real: are you willing to do the daily work of being different?