The Long Ride

June 15, 2019
A quiet but stirring historical novel about the awkward, thrilling, and often painful moments that make middle school a pivotal time. It's 1971, and best friends Jamila, Josie, and Francesca are excited to start seventh grade. But when their school district decides to bus the students in their northern Queens neighborhood to a middle school in predominantly black southern Queens in an attempt to desegregate New York City schools, their trio threatens to fall apart. Though their multicultural identities in a predominantly white neighborhood have united them in the past--Jamila is white and Bajan, Josie is Latinx and Jamaican, Francesca is black and white--their families' and community's divisions over the new policy chip away at their camaraderie. Along with all of the usual adolescent milestones, including first love, juggling old friendships and new, and moments of burgeoning independence from parents, Budhos deftly explores the tensions that pulled at the seams of the fraught and divided city during this time. Jamila's narration is thoughtful, capturing the growing pains of seventh grade and the injustices, big and small, that young adolescents face. She portrays with nuance the ways multiracial identities, socio-economic status, microaggressions, and interracial relationships can impact and shape identity. Readers will find a powerful window into the past and, unfortunately, a way-too-accurate mirror of the present. (Historical fiction. 9-12)

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June 24, 2019
In this autobiographical novel, Budhos (Watched) takes a close look at how 1971 integration efforts in Queens affect seventh graders from a predominantly white neighborhood when they are bussed nearly an hour away to a junior high in an underserved community. Jamila, who lives with her white mother and Barbadian father, is used to being regarded as black, as are her mixed-race friends Josie and Francesca. But in the halls of JHS 241, where Jamila feels she can finally blend into the mix of skin tones, she is surprised to be called a “white girl” and criticized for her blossoming relationship with John, a black boy. Bolstered by a warm family life, Jamila copes with the emotional turbulence of being 12 and trying to fit in, along with the larger struggles of a new environment and the swelling undercurrent of anger that occurs both at school and in her own community. Budhos creates a cast of sympathetic and credible characters—both adults trying to do the right thing and children caught in the middle of a social “experiment”—in this compassionate and thoughtful depiction of families grappling daily with the inequities of a changing society. Ages 10–up.

September 1, 2019
Grades 5-8 Twelve is the best and twelve is the worst, begins Jamila's narration, a nod to Dickens, revived for her 1970's world. For Jamila and her best friends, Josie and Francesca, all mixed-race tweens living in the same middle-class Queens, New York, neighborhood, middle-school growing pains are complicated by a busing policy implemented in their community. Budhos gracefully balances the surrounding complex issues of race, class, and equity, without losing focus on the small moments (nascent crushes, perfect outfits) that dominate the lives of her young protagonists. Queens itself plays a quiet but significant part?known as a bastion of diversity, it's still not immune to segregation. Save for descriptions of Peter Pan collars and landlines, many of the sentiments and scenarios feel almost entirely contemporary, and they'll resonate with a wide audience while adding context to still-contentious debates about the legacy of integration policies. For fans of the tone and drama of Rebecca Stead's Goodbye Stranger (2015) and the historical lens of Meg Medina's Burn Baby Burn (2016) or Steven B. Frank's Armstrong & Charlie (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)