Class Act: A Graphic Novel (New Kid)

New York Times bestselling author Jerry Craft returns with a companion book to New Kid, winner of the 2020 Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Kirkus Prize. This time, it’s Jordan’s friend Drew who takes center stage in another laugh-out-loud funny, powerful, and important story about being one of the few kids of color in a prestigious private school.
Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying “You have to work twice as hard to be just as good.” His grandmother has reminded him his entire life. But what if he works ten times as hard and still isn’t afforded the same opportunities that his privileged classmates at the Riverdale Academy Day School take for granted?
To make matters worse, Drew begins to feel as if his good friend Liam might be one of those privileged kids. He wants to pretend like everything is fine, but it's hard not to withdraw, and even their mutual friend Jordan doesn't know how to keep the group together.
As the pressures mount, will Drew find a way to bridge the divide so he and his friends can truly accept each other? And most important, will he finally be able to accept himself?
New Kid, the first graphic novel to win the Newbery Medal, is now joined by Jerry Craft's powerful Class Act.\nFrom School Library Journal\nGr 4-8-Picking up where New Kid left off, this sequel finds Jordan starting another riotous, discomfiting year at Riverdale Academy Day School and pondering his future. For now, he has time to burn alongside best friends Drew and Liam. An initial sequence following the three boys' daily commutes encapsulates conflicts to come. Lighter-skinned Black, middle-class Jordan eats breakfast with his loving parents before his father drives him to school from Manhattan. Drew, who is also Black yet darker-skinned and working-class and whose doting grandmother is already at work when he leaves for school, catches two buses from Co-op City. Live-in staff attend to white, wealthy Liam while his parents, entrenched in cold war at opposite ends of the table, ignore their three children. Craft hereafter toggles among these points of view but focuses on Drew, who must work "twice as hard to go half as far." Once again, the author/illustrator's full-color panels captivate, drawing on comics' capacity for visual metaphor and hyperbole to deliver heavy payloads. He relies on Jordan's cartoons-rendered in simple, black-and-white linework-to pause the narrative and deliver incisive, bite-size observations on race, socioeconomic status, burgeoning individuality, and pubescent perils. (Lest the subject matter seem overwhelming, be it known that the book is hilarious-see, for instance, the interstitial title pages parodying popular graphic novel covers.) In time, the growing boys-unlike their school, which has no clue how to address institutional inequities and simmering tensions-initiate the painful but necessary work required to truly see and support one another. VERDICT Lightning strikes twice as Craft again produces a funny and appealing yet sensitive and nuanced middle grade tale of inequity and microaggressions.-Steven Thompson, Bound Brook Memorial P.L., NJα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.