Stamped

I haven't stopped thinking about Stamped since I finished reading it. I was familiar with Jason Reynolds' writing after reading All American Boys and Long Way Down several years ago. I appreciated his skill as a writer and a communicator after reading both.  In his writing, he is able to create complex characters and situations while making the stories accessible to his audience. Stamped in no different. While the characters in Stamped are actual people, Mr. Reynolds allows his readers to understand the complexities that lived within them.  I'm looking at you Thomas Jefferson!  And while the situations are our actual history (even though Stamped is not a history book) much of what you read feels unbelievable and infuriating because studying the whole story never really happened before. 

I have had the opportunity to listen to Jason Reynolds speak twice over the last few weeks.  His words have stayed with me: 

• It's [racism] woven into the fiber of our whole country.  Mitigate the harm by approaching everybody as human beings. 
• No one gives you a cookie for being a "good" person. If you want to do it right, learn how to listen.... Your cowardice is killing people.
• Crawl towards judgment and sprint to understanding.  There is a "why" we have to answer.

Jason Reynolds is an author whose voice I will continue to value, listen to, and learn from.  I hope you will do the same.

Learn more about Jason Reynolds, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature