New Kid By Jerry Craft: Revisiting an old book

    

 Hello Everyone. Over the past few independent reading days, I've been rereading the book New Kid by Jerry Craft. I read this book back in 7th grade and didn't really think much of it. I didn't particularly like or dislike it I just went through class day by day not really being interested in it. When I was taking a look at the bookshelf in our classroom one day a few weeks ago, this book caught my eye. I remembered reading it before and with my recent readings of Harry Potter showing that you can always catch new things when rereading a book, I thought I might be able to gain some new perspectives on this book. I then picked up he book and began reading.

    The story follows a 7th grade boy named Jordan who just transferred into a new private school in New York. As the title suggest he's the new kid at the school and the story follows the challenges of this depicting themes of racism, poverty gaps, and other challenges that might not even happen at school directly. Jordan is an African American boy and the school he's attending is a mainly white school. This leads to him being racially profiled more times than he can count. Weather it's teachers assuming he's on financial aid because of his race or school bullies making racist jokes, he experiences all at this new school.

    While reading this book, I started looking more closely at these micro aggressions and noticed some that I hadn't before. Unlike other books, this one doesn't hold your hand and tell you a comment was racist then proceed to explain why. A comment will be made and characters will sometimes never follow up on it. When I read the book in 7th grade I wasn't a fan of this because I didn't understand what some of the comments meant but now that I have a better understanding on some of these more serious topics it made the book way more enjoyable. This book was a fun one to read and I suggest it to anyone who wants a book with more serious topics in an easy to read graphic novel format. I also suggest that you go back and read old books. Who knows, you might find some new enjoyment in them.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day,

Madden Still