NEW KID

Jordan Banks would rather be drawing cartoons than almost anything else, but instead of the art school he wanted, his parents enroll him in an academically rigorous private school where he's one of just a few students of color. Jerry Craft, an award-winning author-illustrator, renders his seventh-grade year in full graphic-novel form, letting panels carry the small daily moments — the microaggressions and cultural misunderstandings — that build up over the length of a school year. HarperCollins published this 200-page hardcover in 2019 for ages 8 to 12, part of the award-winners shelf, and it holds a 4.8 average across roughly 5,000 Goodreads ratings.

What keeps it from reading like an issues book is that Craft gives the weight of race, class, and identity real warmth and humor alongside it, so Jordan comes across as a specific, funny, likable kid rather than a stand-in for a lesson. A reader living between two worlds, home and a school where he doesn't quite fit the expected mold, gets to see that particular tension drawn out panel by panel, while a reader who's never lived it gets a way in that doesn't feel like homework. Either way, the expressive artwork carries enough of the emotional load that this works even for a kid who wouldn't normally stick with a book this long.