Jerry Craft's sequel to New Kid continues the story of friends Jordan and Drew at the prestigious Riverdale Academy Day School in the Bronx. Jordan and Drew have a hard time fitting in to the mostly white school.
The Riverdale School's Morgan Library is "state of the art" at least that's what Principal Mr. Roche tells some potential students from the underserved Cardi De Academy. The students from Cardi De respond that their library "is six boxes of old books...five of them...on Martin Luther King".
Jordan and Drew are asked by Librarian Miss Brickner to "help pick out diverse books for the library", they are initially eager to help but when they suggest that graphic novels be included she retorts that "graphic novels aren't real books". I always like to see a bit of metafiction in a book.
Both New Kid and Class Act have been challenged in a number of school districts across the country, most notably in Katy, Texas where an event with Craft was cancelled in 2021 after a parent complained that the books advocated Critical Race Theory (something that the author had never even heard of before).
I picked this book up from a Little Free Library with this cool sticker on it.
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