New Kid

Jerry Craft

Comics and graphic novels

First published: 2019
Print length: 256 pagesHarperCollins, 2019

Newbery Medal, 2020

Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature, 2019

Description

Twelve-year-old Jordan Banks loves drawing cartoons and hopes to attend art school, but his mother enrolls him at prestigious Riverdale Academy Day instead. Traveling from Washington Heights into a school with few Black students, Jordan must learn unfamiliar social codes while classmates and teachers commit racial microaggressions, confuse Black students’ names, and overlook distinctions obvious to him. A student guide named Liam helps him settle in, while conversations with Drew give him another perspective on navigating the academy. Jordan’s friendships stretch across race, wealth, and neighborhood, but belonging in one setting can make him feel disloyal or misunderstood in another. Through Jordan’s cartoons and daily encounters, the graphic novel explores code-switching, friendship, and the strain of moving between social worlds.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Dialogue-driven · Direct · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Earnest · Hopeful · Humorous · Warm

Structure

Episodic · Linear

Focus

Character · Relationships · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

Art and creativityBelongingClassFriendshipIdentityRace and racism

About Jerry Craft

Jerry Craft is a Harlem-born, Washington Heights-raised cartoonist and children’s author-illustrator whose career spans the syndicated strip Mama’s Boyz and the middle-grade graphic novels New Kid, Class Act, and School Trip. His school stories draw on his own experience at a predominantly white private school and on raising two sons who attended similar institutions. Craft uses quick, approachable humor to examine racism, stereotyping, class, and institutional blind spots without reducing Black childhood to hardship. His characters differ in background, family life, appearance, ambition, and temperament, making ordinary friendships and awkward moments central to the work. That attention to varied Black experience gives his socially observant comics their particular range.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: HarperCollins
Language: English
ISBN: 9780062691194

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