Jerry Craft (1) (1963–)

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 show more 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)

-Kirkus Review show less

I’m so glad that New Kid won the Newbery Award because it will bring this book into the hands of more kids, teachers, and librarians who need to read it. In interviews Craft is quoted as saying he wanted to write a different kind of narrative about African American kids that reflected his own childhood experience. Despite Craft wanting to write a book that kids like him could feel good reading, there are still numerous incidents of micro aggressions against people of colour and people of show more limited economic means.

Hopefully reading New Kid will help students become more aware of their own racial and socioeconomic biases, while at the same time enjoying a very relatable story about families and fitting in at a new school. White, middle-class teachers and librarians, should park our white fragility and check our own practices for these micro aggressions. If you get that uncomfortable “I’ve said/done that” feeling from the actions of the teachers in this book, that is a good thing if it motivates you to be more aware of your own implicit racism. show less

Who can resist a story about starting a new school? Is there anything more daunting than the first day? Maybe the second day? :) This story is about 7th grader Jordan Banks and his new private middle school.

If you love books with lots of cultural misunderstandings, you'll love this story. Trying to fit in comes in so many shades: art school stereotypes, rich kids versus not-rich kids, that awful feeling when teachers think they are more open-minded than they are. The way Jordan and his show more friend cope with being called by the names of earlier non-white students the teacher remembers is so much fun.

What I loved about this book was that everyone made mistakes and everyone made friends. Using your skills and good manners to find a place in the new school feels like just the story we all need right now. show less

Jordan is going into the seventh grade, and his parents have decided that he should attend a top-notch school rather than his neighborhood school in Washington Heights. Jordan would rather go to an art school, but his mother is concerned that he learn the rules of making it in a white world.

On the first day of school, Jordan is picked up by a classmate and his father in an expensive car. The classmate, Liam, has been assigned to show him around and get him acclimated. At first Riverdale show more Academy Day School seems to be a stereotypical nightmare for a black kid: affluent white kids who tease him and teachers who either overcompensate or are unwittingly racist. But Jordan learns that in becoming the new kid at school, he can become a new kid inside, one who sees shades of grey and not just black and white.

I enjoyed this book about fitting in, that doesn't shy away from issues of race and class, but is ultimately hopeful. One of my favorite parts is when the kids go to a book fair, and there are two kinds of books: mainstream books with colorful covers and stories full of hope, and African American books with a depressingly realistic photo on the cover and protagonists who live in the 'hood in broken homes, and with blurbs like "A gritty, urban reminder of the grit of today's urban grittiness."

The artwork alternates between full color spreads and black and white ones. The pages depicting Jordan's drawings have simple pencil artwork. The text is funny, allowing the reader to laugh, but at the same time is bittersweet about the difficulties of being the new kid. The author wrote two more books in this series. show less