It’s time for Flashback Friday, where we feature a book that’s at least two years old. We started this feature a few years ago with our besties over at Fiction Fareas a way to highlight books we might have forgotten about. They could be books we’ve read and loved or books we need to jump on. If you have a #FlashbackFriday, let us know in the comments. If you want more info about this feature, check out the details here. This week, we’re featuring:
We had the privilege of meeting Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely at the Louisiana Book Festival a few years ago, and let us tell you…they were mesmerizing. Even though this book is five years old, its relevance is astounding and we couldn’t pick a better book to get back into #FlashbackFriday with.
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
All American Boys by Brendan Kiely, Jason Reynolds Published by Atheneum on September 29, 2015
Genres: Contemporary
Pages: 316
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Rashad is absent again today.
That’s the sidewalk graffiti that started it all…
Well, no, actually, a lady tripping over Rashad at the store, making him drop a bag of chips, was what started it all. Because it didn’t matter what Rashad said next—that it was an accident, that he wasn’t stealing—the cop just kept pounding him. Over and over, pummeling him into the pavement. So then Rashad, an ROTC kid with mad art skills, was absent again…and again…stuck in a hospital room. Why? Because it looked like he was stealing. And he was a black kid in baggy clothes. So he must have been stealing.
And that’s how it started.
And that’s what Quinn, a white kid, saw. He saw his best friend’s older brother beating the daylights out of a classmate. At first Quinn doesn’t tell a soul…He’s not even sure he understands it. And does it matter? The whole thing was caught on camera, anyway. But when the school—and nation—start to divide on what happens, blame spreads like wildfire fed by ugly words like “racism” and “police brutality.” Quinn realizes he’s got to understand it, because, bystander or not, he’s a part of history. He just has to figure out what side of history that will be.
Rashad and Quinn—one black, one white, both American—face the unspeakable truth that racism and prejudice didn’t die after the civil rights movement. There’s a future at stake, a future where no one else will have to be absent because of police brutality. They just have to risk everything to change the world.
About Jason Reynolds
After earning a BA in English from The University of Maryland, College Park, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where you can often find him walking the four blocks from the train to his apartment talking to himself. Well, not really talking to himself, but just repeating character names and plot lines he thought of on the train, over and over again, because he’s afraid he’ll forget it all before he gets home.
