*audiobook*
I was looking for something to listen to, and this sounded like a good middle grade read.
This is the story of Brian, who is a good, smart kid but doesn’t necessarily have a large friend group. A boy named Mike walks into the Boys & Girls Club where Brian’s mom works one day, and Brian’s parents push for Brian to become friends with Mike. (Brian’s pa is known for his temper and kind of runs the street corner by the bodega, so he knows Mike from the streets.) They bond over comics right away, and as their relationship grows, Mike starts to push the boundaries a little more and asks Brian to do riskier things with him, like hop turnstiles to subway surf or to skip school. Brian feels conflicted, but Mikems role in his life as a kind of brother takes over. Things eventually get bad enough to when they fight each other, and the book kind of ends on a cliffhanger, with us knowing that Brian is going to talk to Mike the next day and sort things out.
It wasn’t necessarily riveting or anything to me, but I do like audiobooks better when the author reads it themselves, so that was good. I can see a lot of students connecting with a book like this though, and I hope many would follow Brian’s footsteps and be the bigger and better person.