Teenage fiction, Jacko's Gang

????When Tiffany's best friend joins Jacko's gang Tiffany feels lonely and miserable. For a while it seemed she could have her own boyfriend, Dave Trung. But Jacko's gang label him a nerd and a wanker because he's Vietnamese. She drops him and is invited to join Jacko's gang on a six day beach camp. A holiday away from parents, police, and adults; where they can be free to do whatever they like.
????But the beach camp turns into a disaster. The boys are nearly always drunk, and when Tiffany, trying desperately to be one of the gang, gets drunk two boys take advantage of her.

????When they return to school things are worse than ever: she is no longer in the gang, her best friend has found someone else, and her potential boy friend, Dave Trung, has now got a new girl-friend. But it's when she reports one of Jacko's gang to the police for selling drugs at school that all the students turn against her. Well, almost everyone, a nerd joins her in her stand against Jacko's gang with surprising results.

???'S GANG is about the growth of teenagers from conformity towards individuality; a difficult transition and one that some adults never achieve.

????Peer pressure is enormous on sixteen year olds. At the worst possible time they discover sex, drugs, alcohol, money, dishonesty, and the hypocrisy of adults. They also discover the difficulty of trying to break away from the herd, while at the same time desperately wanting to be part of it. Peer pressure is used to make them conform: the smallest lock of hair, the writing on a T-shirt, the colour of socks, the TV programs, the music they listen to, right down to their lifetime goals.

????This story is about those choices--about peer pressure, and the susceptibility caused by loneliness, and lack of self-esteem. It is a story about poor choices--and where they lead to. JACKO'S GANG gives a pre-view of what it would be like to have made some poor decisions. This foreknowledge--theoretical experience--could help teenagers see ahead to some of the most difficult choices they will ever have to face, packaged in an entertaining story.

????Most importantly it is about learning to have the courage to stand up when everyone else is sitting down: to be an individual.
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