9780062885326
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New Kid audiobook

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New Kid Audiobook Summary

2020 Audie Awards(r) Finalist–Middle Grade

Winner of the Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature, and an Audie Award finalist!

An original full-cast audio adaptation of the graphic novel from award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Craft, performed by the author with Jesus Del Orden, Nile Bullock, Robin Miles, Guy Lockard, Peyton Lusk, Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Phoebe Strole, Marc Thompson, Miles Harvey, and Ron Butler. Named an Audible Best Audiobook of the Year!

Perfect for fans of Raina Telgemeier and Gene Luen Yang, New Kid is a timely, honest novel about starting over at a new school where diversity is low and the struggle to fit in is real.

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade.

As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds–and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

Filled with sound effects and original music, this audio adventure is one the whole family will enjoy.

A selection of the Schomburg Center’s Black Liberation Reading List.

Plus don’t miss Jerry Craft’s Class Act!

Other Top Audiobooks

New Kid Audiobook Narrator

Jesus Del Orden is the narrator of New Kid audiobook that was written by Jerry Craft

Jerry Craft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of New Kid, Class Act, and the upcoming School Trip. New Kid won the Newbery Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Kirkus Prize. Jerry was born in Harlem and grew up in nearby Washington Heights. He is a graduate of the Fieldston School and received his B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts.

About the Author(s) of New Kid

Jerry Craft is the author of New Kid

Subjects

The publisher of the New Kid is Quill Tree Books. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Juvenile Fiction, New Experience, Social Issues

Additional info

The publisher of the New Kid is Quill Tree Books. The imprint is Quill Tree Books. It is supplied by Quill Tree Books. The ISBN-13 is 9780062885326.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Betsy

April 16, 2019

Gaps. Sometimes they’re all that I can see.Imagine you have a brain that allows you to retain information in compartmentalized slots. You have chosen the field of “librarian” so this trait is useful in your day-to-day work. As you read children’s books over the course of a year, you categorize each one. You note similarities, differences, and books that don’t strike you as like anything else out there. And you continue to keep track year after year, building up your knowledge, tracking what you’ve seen. Now I’ve been in the children’s librarianship business for quite a while. Along the way, I’ve identified the areas that I really prefer to read. Comics, for example, are great. I’m a big time fan. Better still, comics are seeing a real Renaissance lately. Publishers of every stripe are stepping up to the challenge, providing graphic literature for the hungry young masses. It’s an amazing time to be a comic reader or creator. So tell me this. All those comics out there. All that time. All that energy. Why is it, then, that I cannot come up with a single comic out there for kids that stars a contemporary black boy who doesn’t have super powers? Oh, I can think of the superpowered comics of Miles Morales or the highly charming Sci-Fu. I can think of comics where the black kid is paired with someone else (Lost in NYC) or is part of a large group (“Cardboard Kingdom”). Honestly only one book comes to mind and that’s Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by Greg Neri and, let me tell you, even though he’s the title character, practically the first thing you learn about Yummy is that he’s dead. Do you see, then, why New Kid is such a rarity? Into this gaping void comes a book with a simple fish out of water premise. What sets it apart, though, is how it chooses to realistically deal with all the crap a kid like Jordan Banks has to contend with in his day-to-day life. Blisteringly honest with a respect for young readers that is sadly uncommon, Jerry Craft has created something revolutionary: An everyday black boy in a comic for kids. Middle school is hard. Switching schools is hard. Now imagine switching to a private middle school where you’re one of the few black kids there. Jordan Banks is a seventh grader with a dream. He wants to go to art school where he can let his drawings soar. Instead, he finds himself at hoity-toity Riverdale Academy Day School. It’s okay and the kids are generally pretty nice (with some notable exceptions) but Jordan can’t help noticing things. Teachers who get the black kids' names mixed up. Classmates that get away with murder. Privilege privilege privilege. The longer he stays, the more he sees. The more he sees, the more he understands. And the more he understands, the better prepared he’s going to be for the real world out there.It was only a few years ago that I learned the term “microaggression”. Basically it means, “everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.” With that definition in hand, New Kid can feel like a crash course in how to make someone feel bad. Like a composer of a symphony, Craft gathers together every possible microaggression in his arsenal and weaves them into a comprehensive story. To do this, Craft assembles a crack team of awful people. You have the well-meaning teacher who’s threatened by any student of color raising issues with her (she calls Jordan’s comics a polemic, “against everything this school stands for. And me!”). You have the white kid that makes everyone’s life a misery but never gets called out on it. There are teachers that call the other black teachers “coach” even though they’ve known them for years. A librarian who only hands the black kids books about struggle and hardship (starring other black kids, naturally). With great care, Craft filters these people and moments throughout the book, managing to balance the heavy moments with lighter ones. Even when the story is serious, though, it manages to lighten the tension with ease. The end result is that a kid doesn’t feel like they’re getting info on the state of the world today, but they are. Oh boy howdy, they are.Truth be told, I wouldn’t necessarily call this a plot forward comic. There’s no overarching goal that Jordan’s reaching for the whole time. Basically, he’s trying to survive middle school in the day-to-day, and we’re just surviving there alongside him. I was a little surprised, since I assumed Craft was going to make this center on Jordan’s struggle with his desire to go to art school. Instead, that dream just sorta peters out, though he retains his love of drawing. The end result is a book with form but no drive. Looking back on it, the climax comes when Jordan stands up to some of those people that have made him feel awful. He confronts what’s wrong with the system and, if he doesn’t dismantle it, he at least takes it down a peg. In light of that, I didn’t mind so much the book’s easygoing plotting. Sometimes, though, I did yearn for more clarification. For example, there’s an odd plot point where one of the kids at school is kicked out because he’s on financial aid, but the school found out he accompanied another student to Hawaii over break. It’s a throwaway moment, and maybe things like that happen with real private schools, but I found it a bit confusing and it was never really visited again after the initial discovery. And then I started thinking about what I could possibly compare this book to. For a lot of kids, comics used to be pure escapism and nothing else. What changed? On the adult side of the equation you had Maus talking about the Holocaust (albeit with mice). On the kids’ side? I think of some of the most popular authors of graphic novels for middle grade readers these days. Cece Bell, Raina Telgemeier, Jeff Kinney (if you count Wimpy Kid), Vera Brosgol, Victoria Jamieson, Shannon Hale, etc. What all these folks have in common is their willingness to tell stories about real kids (often themselves) dealing with real problems. What else do they have in common? They’re all white. We know from the We Need Diverse Books movement that a lack of diverse points of view has always been a problem in children’s literature, but it seems to have been taken to an extreme case in comics. What do I compare this book to? Itself. And let me tell you, it would be noteworthy, interesting, fun, and thought provoking even if there were hundreds of books out there starring historically marginalized kids. More than just the sum of its parts, Craft has created a book with guts, that kids will want to read multiple times. Funny, whip smart stuff.For ages 9 and up.

Amber Kuehler

March 07, 2019

This is a must have in all upper elementary and above classrooms. This book is packed with bias and micro aggressions that are important for kids to read and understand -especially kids that live in areas with little to no racial diversity. I cannot wait to hand this off to my students and see what they think.

Dave

June 09, 2020

A middle grades graphic novel, just awarded the Newbery Medal of 2020, the first comics story to ever win that award, one school year in the life of would-be artist Jordan Banks, who lives in Washington Heights on the upper west side of Manhattan, but whose parents enroll him in a posh private school in Riverdale, in the Bronx. Culturally, financially, these are two very different places, and Jordan and some other new students of color encounter some challenges, mainly on racial lines, in their new school. It doesn't seem to be really nasty, and it's not black vs. white kids, or black kids vs. white teachers, but he and his friends navigate some complicated racial territory as "new kids." One rich white kid becomes his good friend, but a favorite page is one illustrating how Jordan becomes a very different person each neighborhood along the way from Washington Heights to Riverdale.I am reminded of another and more complex and layered (for an older, YA audience) book on the subject of racial issues, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, but really, there are now many, many books to help students explore these issues with friends and adults. This one is likable, with realistic dialogue.

Calista

March 27, 2020

This book was a joy to read. I looked forward to it. A kid from an inner city school longs to go to art school, but his parents want him to have opportunities and they send him to a prep school that's private where he is a minority among wealthy kids. It's the classic fish out of water, having to find your way in school story. It's well done and he makes friends and eventually he likes his new school. He has to figure out how to fit in to all the different parts of his life. This might be part one and we might get the 2nd year soon. I look forward to it. The art style is full of energy and a dichotomy of the two worlds. Jordan is an artist and his little cartoons are blended in with the story. This won the Newbery and I don't know if the Newbery should give out awards to graphic novels, it does deserve awards. I am going to see if the Niece will read this one too. I think she would enjoy it.

Jessica

February 12, 2020

Stunning! The first of (I hope!) many graphic novels to be recognized with a Newbery Award, and it's absolutely deserving of the honor! Well written, well drawn, poignant and funny, I couldn't put it down, reading into the wee hours. My 11yo has also read it and loved it, and next it will go to the 15yo!

Rachel Reads Ravenously

September 20, 2020

I really enjoyed this and I will most definitely be recommending this to middle graders for a long time. I think this is a story that many kids will be able to see themselves in, or recognize someone in their life going through the same things the characters went through.

Eliza

July 23, 2020

What an AMAZING comic!

Janssen

July 02, 2021

I haven't read a graphic novel in ages but I LOVED this one. So endearing and smart.

Cassie

November 20, 2018

This is going to be THE most talked about graphic novel in the new year. This is a story that needs to be read and then talked about. Every single chapter had me shaking my head yes. Swipe right to see just two pages of serious truth that readers and teachers alike need to be reading. Out February 2019

Reading_

May 09, 2021

And I'm rereading it. Because. It's Friday. No reasons.

My_Strange_Reading

December 28, 2020

I read a review of this book that said this was an unrealistic representation of middle school, and I’m just 🧐🤔 at that statement. I taught in middle school for 8 years and this is literally all of the issues that I have seen in the halls, cafeteria, restrooms, locker rooms, and even in my classroom. This book is perfect to me because it encapsulates so many important elements of adolescence while also tackling racial and social justice issues. It is humorous but laugh-out-loud funny. It’s poignant and true and beautifully illustrated. I loved how Craft inserted Jordan’s own drawings into the narrative. Can’t wait to read the sequel...in like 10 minutes 😆❤️

Erin Entrada

April 20, 2021

One million stars.

Jenna

January 27, 2020

2020 Newbery winner, my committee year!

Kate

January 29, 2020

Know what I love even more about this book than the fact it won the Newbery? The fact that my middle school son (who magically decided that since his mom is a librarian, books are DUMB) asked me to buy it for him right when it came out last winter and read it right away and begrudgingly admitted it was “fine okay whatever I guess”. YOU GUYS! The Newbery committee picked a book that THIS KID LIKED 😍 That says SO MUCH!Oh and I just read it in an hour and thought it was simply amazing ❤️

DaNae

February 02, 2020

These kids! I love when I walk away from book and feel I know the people that have filled its pages - not because the author told me, but showed me. Craft is often subtle in his character building and this book is all the stronger for it. One of few books that showcases race and micro-aggressions without the heavy drumbeat of righteousness.

Sheila

February 11, 2020

This entertaining and enlightening graphic novel tells the story of African American middle-schooler Jordan Banks, who loves to draw and wanted to go to art school, but is sent by his parents to a prestigious private school that emphasizes academics. Will he be able to fit in among the mostly white students, and keep his neighborhood friends too? The story is well told with excellent, full-color artwork and plenty of humor. This is the first graphic novel to win the Newbery Medal, and it is well deserved.

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