--- title: The 57 Bus: 100 Best YA Books of All Time description: Find out why 'The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives' by Dashka Slater is on TIME's list of best YA books of all time. canonical: https://time.com/collections/100-best-ya-books/6084667/the-57-bus/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-08-11T11:34:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-02T23:52:06.205Z og:title: 'The 57 Bus' Is on TIME’s List of the 100 Best YA Books og:description: Here’s why it made the list og:url: https://time.com/collections/100-best-ya-books/6084667/the-57-bus/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf2f45c7424b06a87/698a1bbcb3fce3e80e0c82c5/the-57-bus-best-YA-book.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 'The 57 Bus' Is on TIME’s List of the 100 Best YA Books og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The 57 Bus' Is on TIME’s List of the 100 Best YA Books twitter:description: Here’s why it made the list twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf2f45c7424b06a87/698a1bbcb3fce3e80e0c82c5/the-57-bus-best-YA-book.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 11, 2021 # The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff  In 2013, a singular moment of violence on a bus in Oakland, Calif., indelibly shaped the courses of two teenagers’ futures**.** Journalist Dashka Slater explores this moment in her 2017 nonfiction book _The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives_. Though Richard and Sasha are both high school students who live in Oakland, their lives and experiences are vastly different: Sasha is a white genderqueer teen with Asperger’s syndrome, a middle-class upbringing and a private-school education; Richard is a Black teenager from East Oakland who attends public school and hopes for a brighter future despite encountering intense interpersonal and structural violence. After Richard impulsively lights Sasha’s skirt on fire on the bus one day, the consequences that follow challenge the ways in which they and their communities think about race, gender, class, accountability and justice. Slater approaches both students’ perspectives with nuance and complexity, and while there are no easy answers in this narrative, her compassionate writing shows that there’s often more to the story than we see. —_Cady Lang_ **Buy Now**: _The 57 Bus_ on [Bookshop](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780374303235 "undefined") | [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1432849263/ref=as%5Fli%5Fqf%5Fasin%5Fil%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=time-books-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1432849263&linkId=8fd770aa8f9239497723f072eb11cd13 "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/100-best-ya-books/6084667/the-57-bus/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/100-best-ya-books/6084667/the-57-bus/"},"headline":"The 57 Bus","datePublished":"2021-08-11T11:34:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-02T23:52:06.205Z","description":"Find out why 'The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives' by Dashka Slater is on TIME's list of best YA books of all time.","url":"https://time.com/collections/100-best-ya-books/6084667/the-57-bus/","keywords":["Books","Lists","best YA books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf2f45c7424b06a87/698a1bbcb3fce3e80e0c82c5/the-57-bus-best-YA-book.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf2f45c7424b06a87/698a1bbcb3fce3e80e0c82c5/the-57-bus-best-YA-book.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/100-best-ya-books/6084667/the-57-bus/","name":"The 57 Bus"}}]}] ```