A Winner: YA Action and Historical Fiction Rolled Into One
For fans of Long Way Down and The Hate U Give, here’s an electrifying YA book to add to your must-read list! Not only is this a well told story, but the characters experience the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and discrimination in housing, like A Raisin in the Sun.
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO opens with the intense emotions of Gibran a high school senior who feels insulted and repressed by much more than just his prep school’s talent show, featuring a modern-day version of “Blackface.” His parents have been urging him to check his emotions, to be careful and follow the rules so he can graduate and move on – and make use of the scholarship he’s been offered in business administration at Howard, the historically Black research university in D.C. Gibran admits that he has been accused in the past of acting without thinking; however, his version is that he is “always thinking. [He just calculates] differently.” Gibran is not the only Black student in this high school, but he is perhaps the only for whom the motivating question is only this: is something right or wrong. And Gibran’s focus is for the greater good, for society, and not just his own condition. It is clear that his mother, a school teacher, has talked with him many time – THE talk. Right now, Gibran’s mother is his only family because sisters Ava is at college and Ashanta is married. Another bonus to this interesting novel are the Gibran’s song lyrics that are interspersed among the tight action.
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO opens with the intense emotions of Gibran a high school senior who feels insulted and repressed by much more than just his prep school’s talent show, featuring a modern-day version of “Blackface.” His parents have been urging him to check his emotions, to be careful and follow the rules so he can graduate and move on – and make use of the scholarship he’s been offered in business administration at Howard, the historically Black research university in D.C. Gibran admits that he has been accused in the past of acting without thinking; however, his version is that he is “always thinking. [He just calculates] differently.” Gibran is not the only Black student in this high school, but he is perhaps the only for whom the motivating question is only this: is something right or wrong. And Gibran’s focus is for the greater good, for society, and not just his own condition. It is clear that his mother, a school teacher, has talked with him many time – THE talk. Right now, Gibran’s mother is his only family because sisters Ava is at college and Ashanta is married. Another bonus to this interesting novel are the Gibran’s song lyrics that are interspersed among the tight action.