Meet-the-Author Recording with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

All American Boys |

Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely introduce and share some of the backstory for creating All American Boys.

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Jason Reynolds: Hi everybody this is Jason Reynolds, coauthor of All American Boys.

Brendan Kiely: And this is Brendan Kiely, coauthor of All American Boys.

Jason Reynolds: So All American Boys is a story of Rashad Butler and Quinn Collins. Rashad Butler and Quinn, they had the same group of friends, they go to the same school, they're from the same neighborhood, the same social economic background but they are not friends themselves, they do not know each other. And one night a terrible, terrible night, a Friday night, Rashad is brutalized by a police officer and Quinn is there to witness this brutalization.

Brendan Kiely: And if you wanna put this in context, we take as a jumping off point the famous line that Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1968 at Grosse Pointe High School where he spoke about two Americas living side by side. And here we are, in this day and age living with this moment of two Americas side by side, and these two boys after this horrible, violent moment, have to deal with the repercussions and the role that they will play in their community after this violent moment.

Jason Reynolds: There is this thing that we really wanna stress. This is not an anti-police book, it's not an anti-cop book. This is an anti-police brutality book. And even more so, what we really want you all to use the book for is a tool to have this conversation. We want you to read it with each other, read it with your teachers, read it with your parents. Discuss it with each other, so that twenty years from now when everybody is old like us the world will be a much, much better place.

Brendan Kiely: And it's also important to remember that just like in real life, while we're grappling with really difficult, hard things, this book is also filled with moments of humor, it's filled with sports and basketball, and people having crushes on each other and trying to sort that out as well. It's a story about really, everyday life as we see it and especially paying attention to the kind of stuff that sometimes the adult world doesn't want to talk about.

This Meet-the-Author Recording with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely was exclusively created in November 2016 by TeachingBooks with thanks to Atheneum Books for Young Readers.