Reading for Change 2021:
​An Antiracist Community Summer Reading Program

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​Available July 1

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Punching The Air, by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam
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* Starred Review *—Sixteen-year-old Amal is tried and convicted of an act of violence against a white boy. While there is a sense that he might not have done what he was accused of doing, it is unimportant whether this is the  case for the book  to work. Through Amal's first-person verse narration, readers learn about his aspirations as a poet and artist, as well as his experience entering the  prison system as a young Black man. It is clear that Amal has had a complex relationship with his education, particularly with his art teacher, who clearly saw his talent but also did not work very hard to support Amal's burgeoning interest, and did a bad job of being a character witness at his trial. The  authors do an excellent job of showing how the  prison experience can dehumanize young men and how their inherent talents can be overshadowed by their feelings of powerlessness and rage. Coauthored by Zoboi and Salaam, who is one of the  Exonerated Five and, as such, has firsthand experience of serving an unfair and unjust prison sentence, this book  is not a memoir. Instead, it can be seen as an important statement about widespread experiences and the  prison industrial complex, rather than the  depiction of a single, notable case. What is clear is that this is not an isolated story. VERDICT This book  will be Walter Dean Myers's Monster for a new generation of teens. An important, powerful, and beautiful novel that should be an essential purchase for any library that serves teens.—Kristin Lee Anderson, Jackson County Lib. Svcs., OR (Reviewed 08/01/2020) (School Library Journal, vol 66, issue 8 , p83) -- from NoveList Plus

Looking for more? Check out the resources below!

Learn More About the Authors

Antiracism: Recommended Reading for the SPS Community

Discover Great New Reads (Find Username & Password in the Library's Schoology Group.)

Learn about the documentary 'The Central Park Five' by Ken Burns, David McMahon, and Sarah Burns

The Central Park Five, Part I: Wilding, from the Not Guilty podcast

The True Story of How a City in Fear Brutalized the Central Park Five, by Jim Dwyer, 5/30/19

Opinion: It's Time To Change the Way Media Covers Crime, by Carroll Boggert, 10/14/19 (Log in with your Google Learn account.)

Check out all that Salem Public Library, our terrific community partner, has to offer - a superb fiction & nonfiction book collection in print, access to ebooks, audiobooks, and movies, passes to area museums, and art, reading, and other programs for people of all ages!

They Are Not the Central Park 5: Ava DuVernay's Series Restores Humanity of Wrongly Convicted Boys - an interview with Ava DuVernay, Director of 'When They See Us,' a four-part series that tells the story of five teens who were wrongly accused of the brutal attack on a woman jogger in Central Park. The series is based on the true story.