Why did I love this book?
In this collaborative novel-in-verse, veteran and award-winning Haitian-American author Ibi Zoboi teams up with Yusef Salaam, one of the five Black teenaged boys who were wrongfully convicted of murder in Central Park a decade earlier—a story documented in Ken Burns’ The Central Park Five. Whereas the story about Amal is fiction, it follows Salaam’s experience and how he came to write poetry while in prison in order to help heal his anger and frustration at the injustice to which he fell victim. The two authors’ lyrical writing is powerful.
2 authors picked Punching the Air as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.
From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.
The story that I thought
was my life
didn't start on the day
I was born
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…