After years of keeping silent in the face of hate, Indian American Lekha Divekar finds her voice.
For all her 11 years, Lekha’s strategy for surviving her mostly white Detroit suburb has been to keep quiet and avoid standing out. Not that it’s done her much good; when her racist classmates aren’t harassing her, they pepper her with questions about her family’s heritage. When a new Indian-immigrant family moves in across the street, Lekha assumes that their daughter, Avantika, will be ill-equipped to cope with the town’s xenophobia. But Lekha couldn’t have been more wrong: Unlike Lekha, Avantika isn’t afraid to stick up for herself. The more Lekha gets to know Avantika, the more she admires her confidence—and the more determined Lekha becomes to find her own voice. Kelkar masterfully develops Lekha’s voice, infusing the protagonist with the perfect balance of curiosity, wit, and insight. Furthermore, she roots the novel in the present by juxtaposing Lekha’s school troubles with local hate crimes and a local congressional election dominated by a far-right candidate. Unfortunately, Lekha does most of her character development in the last third of the book, making the first two-thirds feel more like an increasingly monotonous catalog of complaints than a plot arc. Furthermore, at times, the author’s view can be Hindu-centric, as when she refers to Marathi New Year as an Indian, rather than Hindu, holiday. Overall, though, the book addresses important issues of racism, colorism, and xenophobia through a well-drawn narrator whose political evolution is fascinating to watch.
Tackles important issues with nuance—but pacing lags. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3938-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
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Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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An engrossing, humorous, and vitally important graphic novel that should be required reading in every middle school in...
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Jordan Banks takes readers down the rabbit hole and into his mostly white prep school in this heartbreakingly accurate middle-grade tale of race, class, microaggressions, and the quest for self-identity.
He may be the new kid, but as an African-American boy from Washington Heights, that stigma entails so much more than getting lost on the way to homeroom. Riverdale Academy Day School, located at the opposite end of Manhattan, is a world away, and Jordan finds himself a stranger in a foreign land, where pink clothing is called salmon, white administrators mistake a veteran African-American teacher for the football coach, and white classmates ape African-American Vernacular English to make themselves sound cool. Jordan’s a gifted artist, and his drawings blend with the narrative to give readers a full sense of his two worlds and his methods of coping with existing in between. Craft skillfully employs the graphic-novel format to its full advantage, giving his readers a delightful and authentic cast of characters who, along with New York itself, pop off the page with vibrancy and nuance. Shrinking Jordan to ant-sized proportions upon his entering the school cafeteria, for instance, transforms the lunchroom into a grotesque Wonderland in which his lack of social standing becomes visually arresting and viscerally uncomfortable.
An engrossing, humorous, and vitally important graphic novel that should be required reading in every middle school in America. (Graphic fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-269120-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS
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