Two books by Jerry Craft

[Jordan and Drew. Click either image for a larger view.]

Jerry Craft, New Kid (New York: Harper, 2019) and Class Act (New York: HarperAlley, 2020).

               “Oh, Jordan, graphic novels aren’t real books!”

                           Miss Brickner, librarian,                            Riverdale Academy Day School

Jordan is Jordan Banks, from Washington Heights, an artist/cartoonist and new kid starting “first form” (seventh grade) at Riverdale. He has his heart set on the High School of Art, Music, and Mime, but, well, parents. Jordan’s mom Ellice, who works in publishing, dotes on her twelve-year-old son (her “little sweet potato”) and wants him to attend an academically elite school. Jordan’s dad Chuck, who runs a community center, is willing to give Riverdale a try. The family is Black, and Jordan will be one of a handful of students of color at Riverdale, a school, he tells us, that’s “in a section of the city that’s so fancy, its residents refuse to admit that it’s actually a part of the Bronx.” And yes, there’s an Archie Comics joke along the way, in one of the two-page sketchbook comics in Jordan’s hand that punctuate the narrative.

New Kid and Class Act are stories of school, friendship, misunderstandings, adjustments, and learning, graphic novels sharply and wittily drawn and written. Jordan’s first tentative friendship at his new school is with his guide, Liam Landers, a white kid from Riverdale whose family has a long history with the school, family-name-on-a-building long. And there’s Drew Ellis, another Black kid (from Co-op City, living with his grandmother). As Jordan and Drew discover, teachers often call them by the names of other Black students. There’s even a math teacher, Black, at the school for fourteen years, who other teachers still assume is a coach. And here’s an example of Jerry Craft’s sharp sense of humor and his characters’ resilience: Jordan and Drew turn their teachers’ mistakes into a private game, saying hello and goodbye to each other with an endless array of names: Jerome and Demetrius, Joakim and DeMarcus, Jaylen and D’Aren.

Things between Jordan and Drew and Liam are more fraught. The Landers family’s wealth is conspicuous: “Is this just one house?” Chuck wonders when he drops his son off for a visit. “Is his [Liam’s] dad a rapper?” Drew asks. No, he’s in business, and he’s always away on it. Liam is self-conscious about his family’s wealth: “Try not to, you know, judge, okay?” The family’s driver, Mr. Pierre, is in the States earning money for his family back in Haiti. There’s also a maid, which puzzles Jordan and Drew, as Liam’s mom (“You can call me Zoe”) doesn’t work. When Zoe Mrs. Landers serves takeout pizza, Drew dreams of a cheesy, dripping mess and finds instead a choice between two sauceless pies, one of which Mrs. Landers calls “the white pizza,” made with mozzarella and ricotta: “Thus its name. And that’s the only reason . . . I swear!” Visiting Jordan in Washington Heights, Liam gets to enjoy the unfraught pleasures of mac and cheese, cornbread, collard greens, and, post-basketball and lacrosse, a chopped cheese sandwich. And in the Heights, Liam gets his own joke name: Liam Neeson.

There are many kinds of comic cluelessness in these stories. Ashley, a white girl who likes Drew, touches his hair without permission and makes him one sweet potato pie after another. There’s a running joke about The Mean Streets of South Uptown, an awful YA novel (with, of course, a white author) and movie — about gritty (yes, gritty) urban life. (I flashed on the satire of Robert Townsend’s movie Hollywood Shuffle.) An ill-conceived effort to bridge an academic and economic divide has kids visit Riverdale from a South Bronx school, Cardinal De Bard, aka Cardi De Academy. (I flashed on the This American Life episode “Three Miles.”) At Riverdale and beyond, the hapless name of the National Organization of Cultural Liaisons Understanding Equality speaks for itself.

School is always school, with jerks (Andy), eccentrics (Alexandra, who speaks through a hand puppet), athletes, gossips, theater kids, and a cafeteria hierarchy. And it’s always difficult to manage friendships from the block when going to a school farther from home. Another complication: puberty is in the air, literally, with Jordan wondering, as Class Act ends, about when he will get the “big-boy stink” that Drew and Liam and everyone else has already acquired. In a third volume? I loved these books, and I hope Jordan’s story continues, maybe even at the High School of Art, Music, and Mime.

*

I learned about New Kid from the This American Life episode “Talking While Black.” Act Two, “The Farce Awakens,” by Chana Joffe-Walt, is about efforts to ban New Kid and disinvite Jerry Craft from a Zoom appearance for students at a school in Texas. What a country we live in.

You can learn more about Jerry Craft’s work at his website.

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