New Kid

Jordan Banks is twelve and lives in Washington Heights. He would love to spend his seventh-grade year at an art school, but his parents enroll him at Riverdale Academy Day School, an expensive private school far from his neighborhood. There he is one of only a few students of color in his grade, and he has to work out how to belong without losing track of who he is.

Jordan copes the way he always has, by drawing. His sketchbook fills with cartoons about the odd and sometimes painful moments of his days: teachers who get students' names wrong, classmates who say careless things, and the daily pull between his home life and his school life. Humor and honesty run through the story, and the small slights Jordan notices come across as real rather than preachy.

This full-color graphic novel is aimed at middle-grade readers and will suit fans of Raina Telgemeier and Gene Luen Yang. It was the first graphic novel to win the Newbery Medal.