Punching the Air

 

My Thoughts:

This novel in verse is powerful, the language and art are stunning. The story is heartbreaking. If you have a student that is caught up by this story, have them read Monster by Walter Dean Myers, in my opinion, the centripetal book for this book . Perhaps they want to watch When They See Us on the Netflix. There are so many books, movies, documentaries, memoirs that can spin out from this book for young, hungry readers. I think the power of this book is that it could be that one bite that makes reluctant readers hungry to read more. That, then, as a teacher, is the ultimate high stakes challenge. Do not let your students go back to empty.

I know I should talk more about this book, but there are thousands of reviews on Amazon for that. I just want to make one outrageous connection and that is to a 17 minute documentary on Netflix titled The Claudia Kishi Club playing now during AAPI month. It talks about how a book/series/character (The Babysitter's Club), for colored children, in this case Asian, can actually change the trajectory of your life, and that when you see yourself in literature (that mirror), it can make you feel visible and free. 

I connect it to this because it would have been so easy for Amal to fall into hopelessness and become another statistic of a black boy in jail. However, his creativity, his art, his mind (like what the atypical Asian Claudia Kishi did for the people in the documentary) was what actually helped to keep him free.  All I know is that this book has gotten a lot of love and it is well deserved. I will have to keep this in my stack of novels in verse that will keep them reading. Also, like a good Marvel movie, do NOT skip over the Note from the Authors and Acknowledgments.  It will be worth it. 

From the Publisher:

From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. One of the most acclaimed YA novels of the year, this New York Times and USA Today bestseller is a must-read for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

The story that I thought

was my life

didn’t start on the day

I was born 

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, because of a biased system he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated. Then, one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. 

The story that I think

will be my life 

starts today

Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it? 

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth in a system designed to strip him of both.