The New Kid by: Jerry Craft - Review

 Its been a while and I would like to apologize for making this when its late, but here is my blog. I read a book called the New Kid and I didn't complete the entire book but I will give my opinions about the book so far. I hope you enjoy this review because I got some things to say about it. Now that I have finished the book recently I have to say that I thought I wouldn't really enjoy but the book actually kind of interested me and because of its art style I thought it would be more catered to younger people but It actually talks about some common issues in the modern world like racism and as seen in this book we'll delve more into that as you continue reading this blog.

So the story starts off with a 12 year old black boy named Jordan Banks who wants to be a cartoonist and so he wanted to go to a school that was much better focused on learning how to draw and stuff but he also believes he doesn't have a say in what he wants to do for a profession since his mom decided for him to go to a private school filled with a mostly white based population north of his neighborhood. The only who seemed to be worried are Him and his father however their mother sees it as a good opportunity for Jordan to the join the elite and ignores the possible factor the he could face some discrimination because of the mostly white population that dominates the school. While being in that school he meets a friend named Drew who just like him shares lots of common interests such as superheroes and such but they also do face some amount of discrimination but they just learn to deal with it because its quite obvious they might find a level of discrimination in a fully white populated school. He also forms a bigger bond with his guide Liam in which they both realized they had a lot in common with and them alongside Drew would go on to from a bit of a friend group along with a girl named Alexandra who most people see as a weird girl due to her use of puppets and using goofy voices to act as them but later on turns out to be a very kind individual. Later on in the story he ends up finally fitting in with the school and no longer becomes the 'new kid' anymore 

The one thing about this book was how relatable Jordan is, he just wants to do things for himself, he wants to do what is good for him and he can be a rather rebellious person and just wants a say in his education and ambitions but that is being limited by his mother who doesn't really let him do much stuff for himself when it comes to school and that gave him much more mixed feelings toward school and his parents.  I also appreciates how it handles the issue of racism in the entire book and it lets us know that hey, racism can still occur in the 2010s and stuff but it also tells that sometimes things can be unfair for you especially when all you did was defend yourself as shown near the end where Jordan's friend Drew stands up to Andy and he also voices his frustrations straight to the teacher without any regret such as telling the teacher multiple times that his name wasn't DeAndre who was a different person and they didn't even look alike. Another show of handling racism in the book was that one kid Andy would constantly make offensive jokes to one of his colleagues named Ramon namely jokes about him being Mexican even though he was actually from Nicaragua and you could tell he didn't really like that because when Andy involved himself in a scuffle with most of the class after being pushed, Ramon jumped on the bandwagon and also came after Ramon. Its also interesting how Jordan can sometimes illustrate his normal feelings through his drawings, in the beginning he showed his feelings of not wanting to go to school but obviously its very high in secret since he doesn't want to show to anyone except if he really trusts them and near the end of the book that he shows people that people can do stuff on purpose to make others feel bad because deep down in themselves they feel insecure which to me was a really high level of thinking especially considering Jordan's young age.

This the end of my blog, I hope you enjoyed it, I was really anxious about sending this in really late because I saw the grade of it the first time and while it did get better I want to go higher and yeah that's it, thank you for taking the time of reading rather than just I don't know reading for history or bio or something.

Elliot