Deep Dive Into Jane Lee

New Kid- Jerry Craft

It’s hard to be the new kid. As the years go past, and the grades get higher, it’s even harder to fit into the circle of friends.

I had the fortune to be the new kid of our school when I was younger- a Grade 2 (Year 3) and now I m considered (alas sadly) old. Now I am an experienced (or as experienced a 12-year-old can be) Senior student in Grade 6.

I still remember the faces of the new kids this term. Shy, nervous, excited. Flurries of eye moments trying to catch all the expressions of our faces. Sizing people up. The tightened hands. And this book, by Jerry Craft was an amazing book to describe just that- being the New Kid.

But I know that this wasn’t just about being the new kid. It was about always feeling new. How, in some worlds, people made you feel like you would be the constant new kid o the world- racial discrimination in another form. This time, unlike history, its not physical brutality or not allowing them to do anything. It’s the way of making gateman feel insignificant, and new.  Jordan is the new kid- and also a kid of color. Throughout the book, he realizes that kids with color are often pitied, or forgotten. Though the constant reminders he gets of how he ‘must’ be different, and his doodles, we get to see how racial discrimination hasn’t stopped- nor have tried to be stopped.

Although Andy was portrayed as the villain, I believe that the true villain behind was the teacher- Ms. Rawles, and her refusal to see her wrong doings- how she constantly discriminated the kids of color in her own way- calling them wrong names because she can’t bother to know all of them, to constantly take the side of the ‘white’. In the end, Jordan tries to make the teacher see what she’s doing, but she stubbornly refuses to see her faults and rotten behavior. Instead, she asks whether Jordan is angry, and why he has to produce such work (comic about how he’s being discriminated in his notebook). She will stay pitifully disliked by everyone who has sense, and she will not gain sense herself. It is truly a pitiful person to see in the book.

In a sense, this book was about being the new kid- but not just in school. It’s how we need to make sure that the people who are treated like the new kid and only the new kid need to be recognized for themselves, for the great things they have and will do.

For all of us, to be in a sense, old.

But this time, the old means a good old- with no wrinkles and illnesses. Old with familiarity, and wisdom to last everyone a century.

Thank you