This book can eat away at you. So beautiful, written in verse with such vivid, raw and gripping emotion. What happens one night when teenagers get in a fight and one white boy ends up in a coma? Everyone involved is part of the tragic story, but what continues to the wrongly accused is heart-thumping and beyond wrong. This is a story 400 years in the making, and why we still have to tell it is the real tragedy. How can our country get better? How can we heal? I wish everyone would read it so we can have some much-needed conversations. The butterflies scattered throughout the book helped me breathe through some tough parts and offered real hope. “Butterfly, if you’re in here with me, then you have to go back out there and change the world” I hope the butterfly succeeds.
Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi, Yusef Salaam, (List Price: $15.99, Balzer + Bray, 9780062996497, December 2021)
Reviewed by Suzanne Lucey, Page 158 Books in , North Carolina