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Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
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Rhodes, Jewell Parker. GHOST BOYS Boston : Little, Brown, 2018 IL 5-8 ISBN: 978-0-316-26228-6 2 booktalks
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Booktalk #1 Jerome is twelve and mostly just a quiet kid. He’s bullied at school and tries to keep to himself, even eating his lunch in the bathroom. One day, he meets Carlos and the two become fast friends. Carlos brings a toy gun to school, uses it to scare bullies, and offers to let Jerome borrow it. Jerome reluctantly accepts, but finds that he enjoys pretending with the gun on the way home. A police officer mistakes him for a threat and shoots him. But this isn’t the end of Jerome’s story. As a ghost, Jerome meets Emmett Till, another boy who was killed in a racially charged misunderstanding. Jerome learns about Emmett’s life and the aftermath of his own death. He meets Sarah, a living girl who can see him, who is also the daughter of the police officer who shot him. Jerome’s story has an impact on those who are left behind. (Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award 2019 - 2020) Booktalk #2 When a twelve-year-old black boy is shot and killed while playing with a toy gun by a white police officer in Chicago, he becomes part of a network of ghost boys who have also been killed. He needs to figure out why he can't "move on" and why the only person who can see him is the daughter of the police officer who killed him. The story is told alternately between when he was alive and when he is dead and will challenge you to find ways to end prejudice and make a better world. (Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award 2020-2021 |
| SUBJECTS: Till, Emmett, -- 1941-1955 -- Fiction. Police shootings -- Fiction. Racism -- Fiction. Death -- Fiction. African Americans -- Fiction. Families -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Fiction. Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction. |
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