Best-Selling Book From Writer-in-Residence Featured by New York Public Library in Banned Book Club

The New York Public Library has selected All-American Boys for its Teen Banned Book Club. The novel, which was a New York Times Best Seller, was co-written by Brendan Kiely, a Writer-in-Residence teaching at Seton Hall. 

As part of the initiative, throughout the year the New York Public Library is featuring free digital downloads nationwide for young adult titles that have been the subject of bans or challenges somewhere within the United States. Featured books, such as All-American Boys, will also be the subject of library-sponsored book club events for readers to discuss what they have read as well as author talks.

In addition to All-American Boys, Kiely is the author of The Last True Love Story, and The Gospel of Winter. His work has been published in ten languages, received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, the Walter Dean Myers Award, the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award, and was twice selected as one of the year’s Best Fiction for Young Adults by the American Library Association.

Brendan Kiely will appear along with his co-writer of All-American Boys, Jason Reynolds, a critically acclaimed writer who was a Finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the Kirkus Prize. The co-authors will appear together online on Wednesday, February 21 from 3-4 p.m. EST.

In addition to being a New York Times bestseller, All-American Boys was named a Coretta Scott King Author Honor book and was a recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. 

The book tells the story of two teens—one Black, one white—grappling with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country divided by racial tension. Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, the book shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from the moment when Rashad is mistaken by a police officer for a shoplifter unfold and reverberate.

As another description of the book notes,

The story is told in Rashad and Quinn’s alternating perspectives, as they grapple with the complications that spin out of this violent moment and reverberate in their families, school and town. Over the course of one week, Rashad tries to find the strength to accept his role as the symbolic figure of the community’s response to police brutality, and Quinn tries to decide where he belongs in a town bitterly divided by racial tension.  Ultimately, the two narratives weave back together, in the moment in which the two boys, now changed, can actually see each other—the first step for healing and understanding in a country still deeply sick with racial injustice. Reynolds pens the voice of Rashad, and Kiely has taken the voice of Quinn.

You can access the Banned Book Club virtual discussion, read more about the Teen Banned Book Club and gain free digital access to the book here.

Categories: Arts and Culture