Biblio Reviews

I had been worried about Jerry Craft's New Kid (2019), a graphic novel chronicling seventh grader Jordan Banks's first year in a predominately white private school.  Brilliant in every way, I had felt like the book wasn't getting the attention it deserved. And so, it was with joy that I heard it won the 2020 Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Medal. Both awards are well-deserved, for New Kid is beautifully crafted (pun intended) and addresses serious topics with humanity and humor. Exploring the concept of identity--the factors that influence, change, and/or define it--my seventh graders were primed to fall in love with New Kid , too, once I recommended it for independent reading. By the time they finished the first chapter, my students were sold on the novel. This is because Jordan's personality and family were quickly and clearly established and presented in ways that my kids could relate. Jordan Banks is your regular, seventh grade boy trying to find his p...

One of my all-time favorite TED Talks is 2008 McArthur Fellow and writer Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie's " The Danger of a Single Story ." In her Talk, she makes a case for the importance of publishing varied and numerous stories, particularly about those who historically have been marginalized.  As she brilliantly articulates, the lack of variety and availability of some groups' stories has resulted in "single stories"--stereotypes--about them: "[ S]how a people as one thing,   as only one thing,   over and over again,   and that is what they become." Her concept of "single stories" explains why I have sometimes been...reserved in reading "ethnic" or "urban" literature. A girl gets tired of reading the same type of victimization-type of stories, you know? I find many "ethnic" or "urban" stories to be very limiting and repetitive in setting, plot, and genre. They seem to always be based on reality or...