Jamila, Josie, and Francesca are three mixed-race girls who have always felt like outsiders in their mostly white neighborhood in Queens, but at least they have each other. Now it’s seventh grade, and they’re part of an experiment where kids will go on a long bus ride to integrate a new school in a black neighborhood. Maybe there the three girls can finally fit in.
But Francesca’s parents put her in private school. And Jamila and Josie discover that they’re not even in the same classes.
How do they find their place in a school divided between black and white? And what about the boys wanting to be friends–and maybe more? Can kids come together when grown-ups stay apart?
In this tender story of friendship and family love, award-winning author Marina Budhos captures what it’s like to tip from twelve to thirteen and to try to carry the dreams of adults.
Author
Marina Budhos
Marina Budhos is an author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction. Her newest novel, Watched, takes on surveillance in our post 9/11 world and is a 2017 Walter Award Honor and an Asian-Pacific American Award in Literature Honor. Watched is a companion book to Ask Me No Questions, which was an ALA Best Books and Notable, winner of the first James Cook Teen Book Award, and her YA novel Tell Us We’re Home is a 2017 Essex County Big Read YA pick. In spring 2017, Budhos also published Eyes of the World: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro & The Invention of Modern Photojournalism, co-authored with her husband Marc Aronson. Their previous book, Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom & Science, was a 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Award Finalist. Budhos’s other books include The Professor of Light, House of Waiting, and a nonfiction book, Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers. Her short work has appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Awl, The Nation, The Daily Beast, Marie Claire, Redbook, and in numerous anthologies. Ms. Budhos has received an EMMA (Exceptional Merit Media Award), a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, and has twice received a Fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. She has been a Fulbright Scholar to India, given talks throughout the country and abroad, and is currently a professor of English at William Paterson University.
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