All American Boys Audiobook (Free)

A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor publication, and receiver of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature.

In this New York Times bestselling book, two teens-one black, one white-grapple with the repercussions of an individual violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

A handbag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad wants at the part bodega. What he finds instead is certainly a fist-happy cop, about All American Boys Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s taken nothing at all for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s level of resistance to keep the bodega as resisting arrest, errors Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to remain STILL as purchased. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding that person in to the concrete pavement?

There have been witnesses: Quinn Collins-a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate that has been raised simply by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan-and a video camera. Shortly the beating is all around the information and Paul gets threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn won’t believe that the man who has fundamentally been his savior could possibly be guilty. But Rashad is definitely absent. And absent once again. And again. And the basketball team-half of whom are Rashad’s greatest friends-start to take sides. As does the institution. And the city. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and effects they had under no circumstances considered before.

Created in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred analyzed tour de pressure shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn simply because the complications from that single violent moment, the type used directly from today’s headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.