Punching the Air /
Zoboi, Ibi Aanu, author.
Punching the Air / written by Ibi Zoboi with Yusef Salaam ; illustrations by Omar T. Pasha. - Large print edition. - Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, 2020. - 493 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. "Boys just being boys" turns out to be true only when those boys are white. The story that I think will be my life starts today Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?
Ages 14-up Thorndike Press Grades 10-12 Thorndike Press
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature, 2020 Carnegie Medal Nominee, 2022
9781432884727
2020946178
African American teenage boys--Fiction.
African Americans--Fiction.
Artists--Fiction.
Criminal justice, Administration of--Fiction.
Discrimination in criminal justice administration--Fiction.
Discrimination in criminal justice administration--Fiction.
False imprisonment--Fiction.
Judicial error--Fiction.
Male prisoners--Fiction.
Teenage artists--Fiction.
Novels in verse.
Large type books.
FICTION / African American & Black / General.
FIC ZOB
Punching the Air / written by Ibi Zoboi with Yusef Salaam ; illustrations by Omar T. Pasha. - Large print edition. - Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, 2020. - 493 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. "Boys just being boys" turns out to be true only when those boys are white. The story that I think will be my life starts today Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?
Ages 14-up Thorndike Press Grades 10-12 Thorndike Press
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature, 2020 Carnegie Medal Nominee, 2022
9781432884727
2020946178
African American teenage boys--Fiction.
African Americans--Fiction.
Artists--Fiction.
Criminal justice, Administration of--Fiction.
Discrimination in criminal justice administration--Fiction.
Discrimination in criminal justice administration--Fiction.
False imprisonment--Fiction.
Judicial error--Fiction.
Male prisoners--Fiction.
Teenage artists--Fiction.
Novels in verse.
Large type books.
FICTION / African American & Black / General.
FIC ZOB