New Kid Response

 


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New Kid

I really enjoyed “New Kid” by Jerry Craft. I love how we visualize what’s occurring and how Jordan processes the info. It has a good balance between humor, advice, social commentary, and character complexity. Since it's a different mode of interaction, different character backgrounds can be explored and understood. An example of the balance is through his struggle to fit in. The humorous portion is him exclaiming “I’m Batman!” As he leaves the house, as the story progresses we see his struggle to fit in at school and in his neighborhood. It reminded me of Starr Carter in “The Hate You Give.”  I found humor in the play on words used for the chapter titles, the call-backs to previous scenes, and dynamics between some characters. I loved how Drew stands up to Ms. Rawle and proceeds to make her uncomfortable by playing into her stereotypes. Craft uses humorous dynamics to unveil ignorance and complexities of life. Throughout the book three similarities between characters are acknowledg...
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New Kid Response

            Jerry Craft’s New Kid has to be one of my favorite books we have read this semester—a descriptor I’ve handed out in the past, but this book runs away with the title due to its monumental achievement of making me laugh out loud, in real life, multiple times. Craft is able to convey so many nuances of the deeply problematic world of private school (speaking from experience) through the eyes of Jordan, whose narration is straight-to-the-point, funny, and true. The graphic novel medium offers so much opportunity for comedy, utilizing visual cues typically unavailable to a comedic novelist. For instance, early on in the story, as Jordan is just beginning to get a feel for his new school, he smiles at the sight of a Black man behind a steering wheel as he stands in a sea of white kids. This smile vanishes, accompanied by a cartoon frowny face, when the driver opens the car door to reveal a white student exiting the car, and...
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Plato and Schadenfreude

  Victoria Sabatino January 30th  Reflection  I want to focus this reflection on the quote by Plato that says, “And yet the malicious man is somehow pleased with his neighbor’s misfortunes.” While I think that Plato otherwise has a very grim and not fun view of humor, he does get this right. To my understanding, the word that comes to mind for this quote is “schadenfreude” a German word that means “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.” And the word and its meaning are true, this is a type of humor, and I will admit, it is funny.  Plato’s quote made me think of schadenfreude because there is a song in one of my favorite musicals Avenue Q that is simply titled ‘schadenfreude’ and it is all about this type of humor. It pokes fun at how we laugh at people’s misfortunes even if they are not funny. In the song, the two characters talk about this concept because they are both down on their luck, and are finding themselves victims to this type of ...
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