Fresh Ink by Lamar Giles - ADVISABLE

Fresh Ink by Lamar Giles, 187 pages. Crown Books (Random House Children’s Books), 2018. $17.99

Language: R (46 swears, 8 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG13

BUYING ADVISORY: HS – ADVISABLE

AUDIENCE APPEAL: HIGH

These twelve authors want to be more than side characters in a white-person’s story—those who are usually overlooked are still heroes. In these stories, different authors have written short stories with non-traditional main characters for a variety of genres, including realistic fiction, scifi, and graphic novel.

The point of these stories is to highlight non-white main characters, so I found it distracting when I was a couple pages into a story and I still was unsure how to see what I was reading—I was fighting against my internal default instead of paying attention to the story. Aside from that, though, I found most of the stories amazing. I enjoyed the new perspectives and empathy I gained by reading these short stories. The PG13 rating for mature content comes from a high school health class talking about male puberty as well as for underage drinking, and the PG13 rating for violence comes from shootings.

Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen