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New Kid

 


  Summary of Book: This book is about a young boy that does not have a lot of money going to a wealthy private school. He is black and feels slightly out of place among the mostly white school. He enjoys drawing and wants to go to an art school instead of this one. At the end of the book, he has become really good friends with the kid that showed him around his first day on campus, along with another black student. He decides to remain at the school as he now feels as though he likes it.

Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would not as I personally did not appreciate that even though we saw a student fighting back against being called a wrong name, he did it in a disrespectful way and totally got away with it. There were just elements of this book I did not agree with and think appropriate for my own future students. 

Appropriate age group for this book: 8-12

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: The only idea or way I can think of using this book is to give an example of how sometimes we think that the type of sport or art we do is the only way to do it and close ourselves off to other ways. In the book, Jordan realizes that there are other ways to do art and he genuinely enjoys it. How I would use that in my classroom is by having the students try out different art projects or maybe reading different books that they don't normally read. 


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