A review by jmanchester0
Public School Superhero by James Patterson, Chris Tebbetts
4.0
I'm not sure what to think. I liked the story. Thus the 4 stars.
But I couldn't help but wonder about a middle aged white man writing from the perspective of a black inner city kid. Then I saw he had a co-writer! Oh. A slightly younger white dude. So where'd they get the perspective from? He was asked this by Mommy Noire. This was the question and how he responded:
The book is about an African American sixth-grade chess devotee named Kenny Wright who lives in an inner city...and you're not. How did you capture this witty kid and his voice?
I'm also not a teenage girl with wings, but I managed to do OK while writing Maximum Ride. Part of my job as a writer is to explore characters and worlds that are different from my own. I'd visited many schools where African-American students would ask me when I was going to write about them, so I felt it was important for me to explore the Kenny Wright's world.
Kudos to Patterson for wanting to write a book that included an oft-overlooked perspective. In fact, he donated 100,000 of these books to under-resourced libraries. According a press release, he was "moved to make this donation after recognizing a large and underserved community of children who don't see themselves portrayed in dynamic, entertaining stories often enough."
That's good. But I'm just starting to become aware of the problem with white people telling the stories of people of color. I can't figure out if the representation of the characters is really accurate - because, well, I don't have that perspective either. It's not that I merely crave authenticity in my children's books. But when we write from someone else's perspective, we need to make sure it's real. Especially when we're writing about a minority, and we're writing it from a privileged perspective.
But I couldn't help but wonder about a middle aged white man writing from the perspective of a black inner city kid. Then I saw he had a co-writer! Oh. A slightly younger white dude. So where'd they get the perspective from? He was asked this by Mommy Noire. This was the question and how he responded:
The book is about an African American sixth-grade chess devotee named Kenny Wright who lives in an inner city...and you're not. How did you capture this witty kid and his voice?
I'm also not a teenage girl with wings, but I managed to do OK while writing Maximum Ride. Part of my job as a writer is to explore characters and worlds that are different from my own. I'd visited many schools where African-American students would ask me when I was going to write about them, so I felt it was important for me to explore the Kenny Wright's world.
Kudos to Patterson for wanting to write a book that included an oft-overlooked perspective. In fact, he donated 100,000 of these books to under-resourced libraries. According a press release, he was "moved to make this donation after recognizing a large and underserved community of children who don't see themselves portrayed in dynamic, entertaining stories often enough."
That's good. But I'm just starting to become aware of the problem with white people telling the stories of people of color. I can't figure out if the representation of the characters is really accurate - because, well, I don't have that perspective either. It's not that I merely crave authenticity in my children's books. But when we write from someone else's perspective, we need to make sure it's real. Especially when we're writing about a minority, and we're writing it from a privileged perspective.