Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I finished Jerry Craft’s New Kid–this year’s Newbery medalist–last night, and I almost couldn’t believe how much I loved it. Seriously! Reading it was sheer delight. One of my favorite things about it was its portrayal of such a broad spectrum of racial interactions. Not the simplistic and ugly ones, because that’s not what the book is for; instead, Craft shows us what it’s like for Jordan in a not-so-diverse school, with the teachers (those of color and those NOT of color), with the other African-American students, with the white students, with students of different ethnicities, and with one girl who comes across as just plain WEIRD. (Because there are those kids in every school, right? I love that Craft allows us insight into her, too.) There are miscommunications, innocent actions mistaken for something else, NOT innocent actions that get ignored or overlooked, and all kinds of attitudes from all kinds of people.

This makes it sound like social commentary, doesn’t it? I suppose New Kid IS that, but it’s so much, much more. Craft’s story is for every kid who has ever felt different, who has ever not fit in, and who has ever wished that he or she was somewhere else. It’s compulsively readable and a story that kids are going to gobble up while adults crack up over the chapter names and their accompanying art. (I’m not kidding, either. I’d read this book for those alone.) It brought to mind the endless conversations my friend Kim and I had in junior high and high school, trying to convince people that no, we weren’t related, and yes, two people can have red hair and not be related, and YES, we are two different people (this to a boy who saw us walking together and blurted out that he thought we were the SAME person). It’s incredibly relatable, entertainingly drawn, and ought to appeal to just about everyone. Go, people. Go read this book, and give it to your kids, and talk about it, because while many Newbery winners are criticized for being the kinds of books that adults like but kids don’t, THIS ISN’T ONE OF THEM.