SHARDS OF SILENCE

Award-winning middle-grade author Young (Diné) makes his YA debut with this story set at a prestigious boarding school.

Fifteen-year-old Derrick Hoskie is moving from New Mexico to Connecticut’s Sagefield Academy, leaving behind everything he’s ever known, including his best friends and his extensive multigenerational family. In this classic fish-out-of-water tale, Derrick needs to figure out how to balance his old and new lives. Off the Navajo reservation, he’s suddenly become a minority, thrust into the spotlight and facing questions and comments from people that are based on stereotypes; Indigenous readers will recognize the fatigue of having to educate others. As a scholarship kid and competitive wrestler, Derrick feels pressure to perform in both the athletic and scholastic realms. Encouraged by his Sagefield history teacher, he becomes interested in recording his great-grandmother Másání Mildred’s Indian boarding school stories before she passes, but she has no intention of talking about those experiences. His assignments are piling up—and he sees that his classmates have found other ways to work the system, such as cheating or abusing ADHD medication. Derrick is a realistic teenager who makes good and bad decisions and has to deal with the consequences. The story, with its well-drawn school setting, has strong pacing that will keep readers engaged. Young’s author’s note describes his own time as a New England boarding school student dealing with culture shock.

A superlative, culturally relevant coming-of-age story.