I bought this today because my friend Kelly, a teacher wrote about it on Goodreads and I knew I had to get it for me and my son. It was in the children's section, an area we don't much shop in anymore, as the reading level of the books is now too easy for my son and he is more into YA. But this was an important read for kids, teens, and adults.
Black boys, and I do mean boys, as in children, shouldn't be criminalized for nothing other than the color of their skin. But too often that is what happens.
Jerome is playing in an abandoned lot in his Chicago neighborhood. He is running and pretending to be a good guy while playing with a toy gun. A cop car comes up and with no warning, without even getting out of the car, he is shot in the back by the white officer. Yes, this is very much like Tamir Rice. It is what inspired Rhodes to write this story.
The connection between Jerome and Emmett Till as Ghost Boys is haunting, literally and figuratively. There are glimpses of others, a whole army of Ghost Boys each seen by someone because as Emmett tells Jerome, "Only the living can make the world better."
I want to be the best I can at making change, I am as Jerome says of Sarah, a white girl but not "white girl" and I know I have a voice that can be used to say this must stop, these young men must be remembered and their ranks not added to.
Powerful, painful, important.
(Finished July 27, 2018)
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