After the First Death

After the First Death, by Robert Cormier, is a suspenseful, sometimes violent book that would be most appropriate for the eleventh and twelfth grades. These students are generally at the “Law and Order” stage of Kohlberg’s moral development (1969) and the book itself is one level above that, at the “Social Contract” stage; thus the students will be challenged in reading and thinking about the reasoning behind the events of the novel.