All American Boys

By Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds

Reading Level

Lexile 770


Length

320 pages


Representation

All American Boys tells the story of an incident of police brutality and its aftermath. The book is written in two voices (one black, one white) by two authors. The authors work hard to give each voice equal weight in the narrative. This would be a good book for a mostly-white group of students.

Read an NPR Interview with Kiely and Reynolds about using the book as a doorway into conversations about race.


Appropriate Content

The publisher (Simon and Schuster) and Common Sense Media both recommend this book for students age 12+. The book gives an honest description of police brutality and contains swearing. You can read the Common Sense Media review here.


Engagement

The first several pages are spent introducing Rashad's character: He's a good student, who likes playing basketball with his friends and is reluctantly involved in ROTC. He's planning to attend a party with his friends, where he hopes to hook up with a girl he likes. Rashad is likable, but I found these establishing scenes a little slow. The last three pages of the first chapter portray Rashad's encounter with the police officer who beats him. I would read these pages with students when rolling out the book club, then have them go back and read the beginning of the chapter independently.

Read the first chapter of All American Boys here.


Substance

This book is a good way to initiate conversations around racism and police brutality for students who haven't had much exposure to the topics. Students who have spent a lot of time discussing racial injustice might find the conversations the book provokes a little elementary.


Summary

Summary provided by the publisher, Simon and Schuster

A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature.

In this Coretta Scott King Honor Award–winning novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?

There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before.

Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviews tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken from the headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.


Book Club Materials

All American Boys: Book Club Agenda

All American Boys: Discussion Questions

All American Boys: Student Generated Discussion Questions


Last modified: Friday, July 14, 2017, 11:53 AM