From The Guardian: America’s ambassador for young people’s literature talks facing down racism and why there’s no such thing as a bad kid… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

In any other year, Jason Reynolds would be traveling up and down the US visiting schools and juvenile detention centers to speak to children, sometimes at three or four locations a day. Even when the local police are angry that he’s there, or when one of the parents has connections to the Ku Klux Klan, or the school librarian has received threats for inviting him. And without fail, from the moment Reynolds enters the room, kids fall over themselves to meet the guy in jeans who will speak to them about rap and sneakers as much as the importance of reading, of being kind.

Everything about Reynolds – the bestselling books, obviously, but also the melodic, easy way he speaks and his carefully selected attire – is for the kids. “I was raised to be meticulous about my appearance,” says the 36-year-old. “But these kids, they need to know that I’m not far away – so it’s sneakers, tattoos, leather jackets, jeans, long hair, all this stuff they think is cool. And when I show up, they’re like: ‘Yo, that’s the dude who writes books?’ It can change the way they think about what it is to be an author, what it is to be literate, a bookworm, a nerd. And I take great pride in that.”

This year, instead of crisscrossing the country, America’s national ambassador for young people’s literature (an equivalent to the UK’s children’s laureate) has been cooped up at home in Washington for seven months. “I’m happy to be home, but I’m missing the road, missing my life.” Somehow, he’s still changing lives. “Anyone need groceries?” he tweeted in April, personally buying food for strangers struggling in the pandemic. Then he launched Brain Yoga, a weekly game on his Instagram account where he challenges kids to call him with their best inventions. Then he buys every single child some books and treats them all like they are his best friend. For some of them, he could be theirs.

For the last few years he has published two or three books a year, landing as many spots on the bestseller lists. All American Boys, a YA novel about police violence written with author Brendan Kiely in 2015, returned to the charts after the death of George Floyd in May. Long Way Down, Reynolds’s award-winning novel-in-verse about gun violence from 2017, has just been republished as a graphic novel. Last year’s Look Both Ways was a moving and funny look at what kids get up to on the walk home from school. The four books in his Track series, named Ghost, Sunny, Patina and Lu for the kids on one athletics team, are all bestsellers. (Basketball player Kobe Bryant once called to thank him for writing them, as his daughter was such a fan.) And in March, working with race historian Dr Ibram X Kendi, Reynolds published Stamped, a children’s edition of Kendi’s history of racism, Stamped from the Beginning.

Read full post on The Guardian