New Kid
- hmatherly
- Sep 5, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 27, 2023
Genre/Awards: Coretta Scott King Award winner
Age Group: PreK-6th
Plot Summary
Jordan loves art and wants to go to art school. Instead, his parents send him to an affluent college preparatory school across town. The kids he meets there are mostly rich and he feels like he doesn’t fit in. Many of his teachers and classmates make assumptions about the minority students based on stereotypes instead of getting to know them as individuals. One day, Jordan finds his voice and everything changes.
Justification
The 2020 Coretta Scott King Book Awards Author Winner came to my attention in 2021. Katy ISD, a school district near Houston, Texas, cancelled Jerry Craft’s speaking event with their students and removed all copies of New Kid from their shelves for review. (Dellinger, 2021) New Kid was later reinstated in Katy ISD (Garcia, 2021), but it was an early skirmish in what I feel will be a long war against libraries.
Illustration
The main narrative of New Kid is illustrated with full-color art that accentuates the diversity of the skin tone among the characters in each ethnic group. In this way, Craft helps the reader understand why Jordan and his friends are so confused when the teachers and white students can’t tell them apart.
Jordan’s cartoons are an unexpected touch. Every chapter includes a two-page spread of Jordan’s black and white sketches. Here, Jordan humorously captures the emotional stress he is dealing with.
Pacing
The story’s pacing was predictable. The first day of school through Christmas break are told in detail. The pace of the narrative picks up in the spring semester. Finals and the last day of school are quite hectic and run together.
Dynamic characterization
Craft introduces both kids in Jordan’s neighborhood plus a long cast of characters at school. I wondered why Craft spent time introducing the kids in Jordan’s neighborhood when Jordan spent so little time there. But Jordan’s grandfather shed light onto Craft’s reasoning when he took Jordan for Chinese food over Thanksgiving break.
Jordan, when you were little, you used to love ‘strimp [sic] lo mein’. . . . Then you discovered pepper steak. And now, it’s General Tsao’s chicken . . . That’s why today we lived dangerously and ordered all three. . . . You don’t always have to choose. Sometimes let yourself be happy.” (Craft, p. 114.)
Jordan realizes later that this is a metaphor and he doesn’t have to play with just his white friends or just his African American friends, and that he’s happier when they all play together. After this, Jordan, Liam, a white student from an affluent family, and Drew, another new African American student, become close friends.
The Chinese food metaphor also applies to the children in Jordan’s neighborhood. At Christmas break, he invites his friend Kirk to play video games with him. “Long time, man. I thought you’d forgotten about me.”
Jordan replies, “Nah, I could never forget about you. You’re my shrimp lo mein.” (Craft, p. 142.)
References
Craft, J. (2019). New kid. (J. Craft, Illus.). Harper.
Garcia, A. (2021, October 15) 'New Kid' by Jerry Craft reinstated by Katy ISD after controversial petition and review. Chron.com.
Dellinger, H. (2021, October 6) How did 400 Katy ISD parents get a book removed? Accusations of Marxism and 'critical race theory.' Houston Chronicle.com.
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