New Kid by Jerry Craft

 

New Kid Book Review

New Kid by Jerry Craft 

  • Graphic novel 

  • Grade: 4th-5th 

  • Award: 2020 Newbery Medal & 2020 Coretta Scott King Award (Author WInner)


Summary: 

New Kid is a story about a young African American boy who is being sent to a private school for the first time by his parents. The young seventh-grader, Jordan, is hesitant about attending this school because he wants to go to art school. Jordan makes new friends with people at Riverdale Academy Day (RAD) including his guide, Liam, a fellow student on financial aid, Drew, and Alexandria who is made fun of for wearing puppets. He also meets a jock named Andy who teases the financial aid students. Jordan feels ashamed of his new school friends but his grandfather gives him an inspirational speech about intermixing his neighborhood and school friends. Even the teacher builds Jordan’s dislike for school by calling him and his new friend, Drew by the wrong name. Jordan learns to appreciate his art teacher and abstract art, combine his friend groups from different neighborhoods, forms relationships with students who didn’t fit in (like Alexandria), and stands up to a bully. At the end of the story, Jordan is like a whole “new kid”. 


Evaluation: 

I would not use this book in my classroom. It is above the reading level for second grade. This was a really great award-winning story. It teaches themes of acceptance, the importance of learning names, and not judging a book by its cover. The protagonist really has substantial character development. The illustrations made the story fun to read and they were very detailed and displayed exactly what the text dictated. If I were to chose a unit to incorporate this book into, it would be a unit on comprehension skills and establishing a purpose for reading assigned texts. 

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