{"id":39174,"date":"2024-03-14T22:42:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T02:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=39174"},"modified":"2024-03-14T22:42:41","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T02:42:41","slug":"review-of-class-act-by-jerry-craft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=39174","title":{"rendered":"Review of Class Act, by Jerry Craft"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Class Act<\/em><\/p>\n

by Jerry Craft<\/p>\n

Quill Tree Books (HarperCollins), 2020. 250 pages.
\nReview written March 20, 2021, from a library book<\/p>\n

Class Act<\/em> calls itself a \u201cCompanion to the Newbery Medal Winner New Kid<\/em>,\u201d so I won\u2019t call it a sequel, but it does tell about Jordan Banks\u2019 second year at a private school outside his neighborhood, where he\u2019s one of a few African American kids. The publisher is right, though, that you won\u2019t feel lost if you didn\u2019t read the first graphic novel, or if it\u2019s been a while. The author is good at catching the reader up.<\/p>\n

And this time, besides following Jordan\u2019s story, we also follow two of his friends \u2013 Drew, whose skin is darker than Jordan\u2019s and faces more discrimination, and Liam, who is white and rich, but whose parents are never around.<\/p>\n

This year Jordan\u2019s bothered that he doesn\u2019t seem to be growing and developing like his friends are doing, and he doesn\u2019t want to stay a little kid forever. He also is afraid that drawing his comics is babyish and wonders if he should go to art school next year.<\/p>\n

For all of them, there\u2019s still discrimination to navigate, and friendships, and girls, and what kids in the neighborhood think of them going to a private school. I liked the part where a mean kid accidentally got his skin dyed green with unwashable dye for Halloween \u2013 and thus became a person of color temporarily. The teachers are trying to figure out how to be sensitive to diversity \u2013 with mixed results.<\/p>\n

The chapter break pages refer to other published books. It starts out with mostly children\u2019s graphic novel references but includes some adult novels as well. I didn\u2019t quite understand the point of doing this, though it was fun for me to recognize the books.<\/p>\n

The story is good, and it\u2019s great to have another graphic novel with Black kids as the protagonists. There\u2019s no doubt in my mind that kids will happily scoop this up and be glad they did.<\/p>\n

jerrycraft.com<\/a>
\nharperalley.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I\u2019m posting the oldest reviews I\u2019ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They\u2019re still good books!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Class Act by Jerry Craft Quill Tree Books (HarperCollins), 2020. 250 pages. Review written March 20, 2021, from a library book Class Act calls itself a \u201cCompanion to the Newbery Medal Winner New Kid,\u201d so I won\u2019t call it a sequel, but it does tell about Jordan Banks\u2019 second year at a private school outside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,21,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-contemporary","category-graphic-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39174"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43454,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39174\/revisions\/43454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}