New Kid, by Jerry Craft

New Kid, by Jerry Craft definitely deserves its own blog post. It is a must-read for all upper primary school kids. It is winning prestigious book awards all over the place, and rightly so.

Jordan Banks’ parents are sending him to a posh new school instead of the art school he was hoping to go to. On his first day it is clear that he is very different from most of the kids who go there. He is from a different neighbourhood, wears different clothes, and he is a person of colour at a mostly white school. While he does make friends, it takes him a while to realise where he fits in, and leaves him wondering if he’ll still fit in back in his neighbourhood.

This very cleverly written and illustrated book explores themes of racism, privilege, bullying and social divides in a way that is extremely understandable to kids, I would say from about 10 years and older. My ‘just turned 10 year old’, who seems to mainly want graphic novels at the moment, thought it was amazing and having read it myself, I think most adults should read it too.

There is a saying in writing that you show the reader instead of telling them. Jerry Craft has done that perfectly in this book. He doesn’t tell the reader that racism hurts people, or that bullying is not on, or that friendships can grow despite different social and economic backgrounds. Craft instead shows the reader all these things and more in a very accessible, understandable way.

If like me you’re at home doing remote learning with your kids and you have a kid who is 10yrs+, I would seriously consider buying this book and using the resource page created by the publisher to have some discussion or writing tasks around the themes of this book. It’ll be $13 very, very, well spent.