True True

Starred review from June 12, 2023
Seventeen-year-old Gil, who is of Jamaican descent, is anxious about starting at a new school in Manhattan, away from his predominantly Caribbean Brooklyn neighborhood. But with a partial scholarship and Augustin Prep’s top-notch robotics program on offer, Gil can’t pass up the opportunity. Gil is also dealing with worries surrounding his grandmother’s worsening dementia and his father’s struggles with emigrating from Jamaica to the U.S. While trying to navigate the majority-white school’s social politics, Gil meets Tammy, president of the Black Culture Club and editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. As favoritism and racism run rampant at Augustin, Gil—accompanied by Tammy and a group of BIPOC classmates—resolves to take a stand. In his efforts to better his new school, however, he neglects his friends and family. In this compassionate debut, a love letter to Brooklyn and Caribbean culture, Hooper paints an organic portrait of a Black teenager who feels caught between two different worlds. Gil’s determination to lift up his peers often results in him disregarding his own needs and wants; through his earnest first-person POV and natural-feeling prose, Hooper presents valuable lessons on the healing power of community, forgiveness, and sharing one’s truth. Ages 12–up.

July 1, 2023
A senior transfer student quickly learns that his prestigious, predominately white private school is a war zone for Black kids like him. To cope with all that's going on, proud Brooklynite, second-generation Jamaican American, and bookish robotics nerd Gil Powell is advised to read Sun Tzu after the long, difficult trip to Augustin Prep on the Upper West Side takes an even more daunting turn. When a racist classmate and his goons bait Gil into deploying his martial arts training to defend himself, he's suspended and placed on probation. The interpersonal bigotry reveals systemic patterns affecting students of color at Augustin, but even as this takes its toll, Gil relies on The Art of War to guide him through an abundance of stressors: School commitments take him away from family and community, his father's in Jamaica struggling with his immigration documents, and his grandmother's dementia is worsening. Even as romance enters his life, Gil is at war on so many politically justified but all-encompassing fronts that he struggles to find time for himself and hurts those he cares about. At times, the presentation of the conflict is a bit on the nose, and ultimately, as Gil takes it upon himself to rage against the machines of inequity, the rage, stress, and anxiety pose threats that Gil, his community, and empathetic readers may all need help navigating. An intense, insightful take on the art of surviving the war on your existence. (Fiction. 12-17)

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December 22, 2023
Grades 9-12 When Gil is accepted into Manhattan's Augustin Prep, his family and community are thrilled at the opportunity, though Gil has reservations about leaving behind his comfortable Jamaican corner of Brooklyn. His fears prove to be correct when a popular, well-connected, white football player instigates a fight with him, resulting in a one-week suspension for Gil--more, he suspects, for his skin color than anything he actually did. During that time, Gil finds The Art of War, by famous Chinese general Sun Tzu, and declares war on the school's racist leadership. But he's not prepared for the extent to which his crusade may hurt those he loves the most. Hooper unflinchingly shows Gil's torment at the hands of hostile peers and ignorant school officials. However, the author is similarly unafraid to highlight how Gil's single-minded quest for justice negatively affects his family and friends, showing Gill to be tough and smart but also reckless. Featuring a rich and layered rendering of New York City few other YA books can match, this debut novel is ideal reading for politically minded young readers.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 19, 2024

Gr 6-9-A Black teen from Brooklyn gets into a predominantly white prep school in Manhattan and is thrust into a world of microaggressions and outright racism. But before one begins to think this is a tale as (unfortunately) old as time, readers are introduced to Gil-Hooper's martial-arts practicing, Jamaican flag-waving, poetry and robotics team-loving protagonist who quickly assures readers that this story is anything but stale. When Gil is given a copy of The Art of War at his dojo, the book really picks up as he uses Sun Tzu's time-honored strategies to gather a following and take on the racist underpinnings of his new school. Infused with the modern and quick language one expects from a contemporary YA novel, mixed with the energy of New York City seen through the eyes of Jamaican immigrants, Dreamers, and first-generation kids, the author takes readers on a journey as Gil figures out how a place at the school of his dreams mixes (or doesn't) with the only life he has ever known in Brooklyn. VERDICT A timely YA novel that takes on heavy themes of race and immigration with freshness, hope, and a dash of Jamaican patois.-Whitney Bates-Gomez

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