As someone who shares a surname with the main character and was born in the year it is set, I had an instant connection to this book.

It is a fantastic portrayal of the LA riots of 1992, of positions of privilege, of racism, and of family. Ashley's family are wealthy, she and her sister live a quite privileged and sheltered life compared to other Black children in their neighbourhood. You learn as the novel progresses that this has been rather detrimental to them.

I didn't love every character in this book. Jo quite annoyed me right from the moment I met her, but her drive to improve her world was still fantastic to see. I also didn't love much of Ashley's friends, and they were the exact kind of people I had tended to avoid when I was in school myself.

This book is beautifully written, engaging, and still as timely today as its events were 28 years ago. A stellar debut.

Ashley is a privileged rich black girl in early 90s Los Angeles. All their lives Ashley and her big sister Jo have been spoiled, sheltered and protected by their parents who want to give them the opportunity to grow up free of the burden of their racial history. Being black, Ashley feels it keenly that she has to step more carefully than her white friends but she has never experienced the full weight of the institutional racism being experienced by black communities throughout LA.
Then Rodney King is brutally assualted by 4 police officers, and the ensuing acquittal sparks cataclysmic protests and riots which bring the horrific injustices and consequences close to home and cause Ashley to rethink who she is and what defines her.
This is a beautifully sculpted coming of age story full of quotable lines and complex characters. No one is fully good or bad but are trying to find their way to love through mistakes and sometimes difficult choices.
It may be set almost 30 years ago (painful since I remember the Rodney King assault as though it was yesterday) but the issues and anger and tinderbox of injustices are unfortunately still all too relevant today. This book painfully demonstrates that from the Greenwood Massacre, to the Jim Crow protests, to the Rodney King riots, to todays Black Lives Matter movement, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

This is a young adult, coming-of-age film set in LA during the 1992 Rodney King riots. This isn’t my usual genre but looked interesting so I thought I would give it a try. It covers many issues aside from the obvious race issues it also covers growing up, relationships, friendships, privilege and identity.

Ashely is a lovely character who has been well protected by har family, they have carefully chosen her school and the area they live in to ensure her safety and wellbeing. Her parents have built a façade as a model black family, with wealth and privilege but this begins to crumble after the riots. Ashley is largely unaware of current events and the riots but becomes more involved and Ashley changes from being one of the girls to one of the black kids. Her sisters’ insistence on being more involved in the riots changes her positioning and perspective as well.

Ashley begins as a very ‘normal’ teenager with her life full of homework, friendships, parties, school and family, she is very relatable and makes mistakes like everyone else which is always nice to see. Through the riots and changes in her family splitting apart and coming back together again, she learns what it really means to be Africa-American.

This was a really interesting read; I learnt a lot and it led me to read more about the Rodney King Riots which I was previously unaware of. Its eye opening and thought-provoking. Following recent events its infuriating how little things have changed in the past 40 years since these riots, history keeps repeating itself and the racial inequality and injustice needs to end.

A very enjoyable read, I felt such connection to Ashley and was really rooting for her throughout the book.
This book had a lot of layers and tackled a lot of difficult but important themes.
I would really recommend this book as it was such an enjoyable read.

The year is 1992 and Ashley is in her senior year of high school in LA. But when four police officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King to near death, LA is then filled with violent protests and fires.

I enjoyed this book. I loved reading Ashley's thoughts and being in her head and seeing her grow as a person throught the book as she is dealing with family problems, friend problems, relationship problems and having to cope with the protests and fires in her city which were caused by racism. Ashley wasn't the perfect character (she starts spreading a fake rumour that one of her fellow students stole some expensive shows and she does sleep with her 'best friends' boyfriend. Her best friend was racist though so I didn't feel sorry for her) but I still liked her a lot. I also really enjoyed LaShawn as a character and wish we had had a bit more of him throughout the book.

I loved Christina Hammonds Reed's writing. I liked how this story was told in the present but then every other chapter or so we would have a chapter where Ashley would tell us something that happened in the past, for example how she met all of her friends. I also liked that this story was centred around an event that actually happened as it made the story more realistic.

Overall, this was a hard-hitting young adult contemporary book that I think everyone should read. I look forward to reading other books by Christina Hammonds Reed as I really enjoyed her writing and storytelling in this book.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster UK for providing me with an advanced copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story of growing up rich and black in the thick of the Rodney King riots of the early 90's. Some of the language was so pretty and it had a lot of heart.
It did feel a little paint by numbers though, and some of the characters fell a little flat.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It is a heavy story, but it is a very important one in my opinion.

For me personally, the mentions of no we cannot go to breakfast at McDonads because I need to fit in my prom dress and ditching the bread on her sandwich just because it means it's also less calories did rub me the wrong way, but I think that is possibly specific to my background.

The Black Kids deals with so many different topics which include race, injustice, prejudice, friendship, coming-of-age, love and family. That feels like a lot to fit into a book and yet that's just Ashley's life. This book is set in Los Angeles in 1992 during the riots following the police killing of Rodney King. Whilst we don't get to see the riots exactly, we do get to see the effects that these have on Ashley, her family and the wider community. One of the things I loved about this book was Ashley's growth throughout.

Despite the fact that this book is set in 1992, there are so many things that are still present in our current time, almost 30 years on, showing that perhaps things haven't changed as much as we'd like to think. Because of this, I think this book is important for so many to pick up and read. Not to mention that it is an enjoyable read.

This story follows Ashley in the run up to leaving high school and takes place during the Los Angeles race riots of 1992, which began after the police who brutally beat Rodney King were acquitted. Up until this point, Ashley has remained in the safety of the bubble her lifestyle has created for her, In which she doesn’t join in with the other black kids in the school, she doesn’t stand up for change like her sister, and she doesn’t call out the words of her white friends.

With the friends she’s surrounded herself with and the blind eye she turns to the problems of others, Ashley is a privileged teenager in a private school that her parents worked so very hard to get her into. The story is not just about the events that occurred that year, it’s also about how they changed people like Ashley for ever. Though she’s experienced racism before, it’s the riots that make her want to change things for herself and the people she cares about.

As a kid in Britain, I wasn’t taught things like this in high school. It shouldn’t have to be the responsibility of authors to teach us about these events, but I’m so grateful to the writers who do incorporate real history into their books. It taught me a lot and encouraged me to do further reading once I’d put the book down.

People will always need to read books like this. It’s not supposed to be comfortable; it’s here to make you listen and think. The Black Kids reminds us that we still need change. The real-life events in this story took place in 1992, and yet it’s eerily similar to what we’ve witnessed this year alone. We need to do more.

DNF

I tried so hard with this book, it was one that I had been eagerly anticipating for a while but unfortunately I just could not make it through it.
It was not the content or the story that was the issue for me, it was the writing style. I found it to be very choppy and confusing, I had to keep stopping to reread paragraphs (sometimes pages) because I didn’t know what was going on it was taking forever to get through the first few chapters so sadly I had to give up on it for now.

After a three week book drought, this book had be back into reading - and then some! I wholeheartedly binged this book. so gripping and scathing. Will definitely be recommending it to my students.

A powerful story about not looking away and about doing something.

Ashley is privileged. One of only a handful of black kids at her LA school, her parents have worked hard to make sure that this is the case. Against a backdrop of the riots arising from the acquittal of the police officers who assaulted Rodney King, Ashley is figuring out who she is and where she'd like her own place in the world to be. The privilege her parents worked so hard for might be the very thing that's getting in the way of her doing this, and it certainly hasn't prepared her at all for the deep-seated racism she's going to encounter in the city she loves, or from the friends that she thought she knew.

A story about finding your place in the world, and a perfect and timely addition to the BLM collection of libraries everywhere.

I was a teenager in the 90s and although I remember the Rodney King case and the resulting riots, my life in rural England meant it was impossible for me to truly understand what it must have been like to live through this. Christina Hammonds Reed captures the emotions that Ashley and her friends and family must have felt watching their world blow up around them in a way that simply watching the news reports could never do. It must have been devastating to live through and it saddens me that almost twenty years later, little or nothing has really changed.

The Black Kids is a powerful book, and, coming from a safe, comfortable home environment, Ashley’s was a perspective that I haven’t encountered in any other book that I have read.

I will admit that I am woefully uninformed on many of the issues surrounding race, and I wanted to read this book as part of my efforts to educate myself. I still have a lot to learn but this book has opened my eyes more than perhaps I expected it to and I would recommend it to anyone else in my position.

"If all the heroes in our stories are white, what does that make us?"

"[...] maybe the problem isn't only with "bad" people; maybe the problem is with the whole system"

This is such a quietly powerful book. It starts off slowly, documenting our protagonist Ashely's daily life at school and chilling with her friends, and gains momentum alongside the LA riots in the background

I loved the slow builds in this book. There isn't much active plot, we're more concerned with Ashley's developments and what's happening around her. She's been raised as a wealthy Black girl alongside wealthy white friends, so she struggles with her identity. Her parent's have also tried to shield her from the harsh and violent realities of being Black, and of her history, which ultimately does her and her sister, Jo, no favours

I love that we see Ashley learning and growing throughout this book. At the beginning she is ignorant of the issues faced by Black people less wealthy than herself. But as the story progresses, and as Jo becomes more present in activism, her entire perspective begins to change

The discussion and portrayal of friendship in this book were super interesting too, as well as the discussion surrounding family and wealth. Ashley's parents believe they're doing the best for their daughters but that might not always be the case

I'd highly recommend this book if you've enjoyed Nic Stone's or Angie Thomas' books. They have similar themes but this one has the added 90s angle which I really enjoyed. The writing in this book was also incredible, there were several lines that I highlighted that made me stop and think

The Black Kids follows Ashley in LA, 1992, as her family and community are engulfed in the riots following the aquittals of the police officers caught on camera beating a defenceless Rodney King. As one of only a few black kids in her school, and the only black family on her street, Ashley struggles to be everything her friends expect her to be, alongside what her family expects from her, and what the police expect from her. Even set apart from the riots as she is, with her wealthy family who have managed to protect her for most of her life, and her unaffected white friends whose main concern in if prom will be cancelled, Ashley is caught up in this dramatic demonstration as black citizens fight to be heard and treated with dignity. Caught on both sides of the battle, Ashley struggles with finding how and where to use her voice.

First off, I want to preface this review by stating I am a white woman living in the UK, and so my review of this book about police brutality and racism will be somewhat automatically limited. I had never heard of Rodney King nor the LA 1992 riots until this book, probably due to a combination of them happening before I was born, I live in a different country, and the fact that we aren’t often told or taught about the important events like this that happened in black history.

However, it’s clear that this book is vitally important and really well done. There is so much covered in this novel, that it’s hard to know where to begin talking about it, but it never felt like the author was trying to ‘do too much’ or squeeze too much in. Ashley has friend drama, boy drama, family drama, school drama, like practically every YA book, and those are seamlessly woven alongside the threads of storylines of what’s happening in the news, the riots, her past. I would have liked the book to focus slightly more on Ashley’s sister Jo, Lucia, LaShawn, Lana, as I found the conversation revolving around her white friends a bit lackluster and boring. However, I can appreciate that this was an important angle to cover to show how distant Ashley was from peers who look like her and share her experiences.

As I mentioned earlier, I had never heard of this event taking place until I read this book and did a little research, and I think it’s really important to talk about these events alongside the tragedies that are still happening to this day, to show how we haven’t really moved on and we still need massive change. I’m really glad I read this to learn about Rodney King and think it’s a really book to do that. As well as books set in todays times, such as The Hate U Give which this book is strongly likened to, we need to know black history outside of slavery and the limited things we are taught. As I say, my experience may be different to what students get taught in America or maybe looking further into history, but like I say, never heard of it.

Let’s talk about Ashley for a bit. She’s a bit of a complicated character. She does some bad stuff, and she knows it’s bad, like the second after doing it she wants to take it back. And somehow, she still sorts of twists herself into a victim for it. She apologises for one thing, but when talking about it she’s a bit too ‘I did a bad thing, I’m a bad person, feel sorry for me boo hoo’ for me to feel great about her character development. I like that she was flawed but at the same time, I’m not a hundred per cent convinced this story wouldn’t have been better if it hadn’t have been told through another characters eyes.

On top of that, the writing didn’t click with me loads. I found myself skipping paragraphs of text because I was a bit bored, I wanted to get to something of substance, and at times I just wasn’t gripped.

Overall, however, I really enjoyed The Black Kids, and rated it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Black Kids is the story of a Black girl who did not grow up in a Black neighbourhood, surrounded by people like herself. Instead, she grew up in a place surrounded by white people who always looked down upon her family (because they were Black) and regularly commit microaggressions towards them. Ashley has learned how to acclimate, to her white neighbourhood, to her white friends, and to her parents - who believe that not raising their kids in the 'hood' and being able to provide them with facilities that poor Black families don't have means that their kids should be more than perfect.

The pacing of this book is slow, but I instantly fell in love with the writing because it pays attention to little details and how they relate to Ashley. The text constantly puts Ashley on the offensive and defensive, making her play both sides as she navigates her life as a Black, somewhat-rich girl. She doesn't fit in with the Black kids, because she is not from the hood; and even though it seems like it she doesn't fit in with her white friends either, because of the obvious. She constantly lets slide micro and macro aggressions from them and tries to not pay attention to their wilful ignorance. And I think, that is what makes this book special. The fact that it focuses on whiteness and how it correlates to Blackness, not just in the face abject racism but with regards to how ignorant most people are to their privilege and they want to remain so. This book is a historical fiction (based around the 1992 Rodney King riots), that has not changed.

I also liked the feeling of hanging in limbo that Ashley displays constantly, because she tries to please everyone and fit in with everyone (losing bits of her own personality in the process) but she never really does. Especially with how hard her parents and she try to fit into the "good neighbourhood with good people" (read white), because no matter what they do, they will always be Black and everyone will always see that first.
Also, the absurd selfishness that Ashley sometimes displays makes her very interesting and realistic, especially when it comes to those less fortunate than her.

Although, this book's synopsis is focused on the Rodney King riots and they do play an important role in the book, they do not occur after more than halfway across the book. Even though the build-up was riveting to read, I was also very impatient to get to them because they were already given so much importance. They painted a very stark picture of America. And to see the exact same tactics being used by the government that are being used right now [August 2020] in the face of the widespread Black Lives Matter movement was eye-opening in many ways.

Ashley goes through a lot of growth throughout the book and it sort of seems selfish the way that she uses these horrific events happening around her, those that are actually affecting the lives of others, as fodder for her own growth. I think this book had a lot of nuance and substance to it, and by exploring it from the lens of a girl who doesn't take the worst brunt of racism in America was very insightful to read because it reinforces the concept of how, at its core, most things are about race.

I'm old enough to remember seeing video footage on the news of Rodney King being beaten by the LAPD in the early 90s. It's one of those moments that really stuck in my 10-year-old mind. So it was fascinating to read a book about this moment in history, told from the perspective of a teenager who was living in LA at the time of the ensuing riots.

Ashley Bennett goes to a prestigious high school and, like her friends, comes from a wealthy family. However, she is the only black girl in a sea of white privilege and as events unfold across the city, she comes to question where she truly fits in.

The release of this book couldn't be more timely, as the world continues to watch in horror at the violence and systemic racism towards black people in the US. The events in this story take place nearly 30 years ago yet still so little has changed.

This is a great young adult book for teaching teens (and uneducated adults) on the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I feel like I can't properly express my feelings towards this book. I definitely enjoyed it, but there were things I enjoyed more than others. I think it's an important read and one that sheds light and brings awareness to a time in history that not many people are aware of (I mean non Americans). I think the book the timing of this release couldn't be better. It is now more than ever that we need to talk about racism, police brutality, microagression, racial profiling and stand against this bullshit.

The Black Kids explores the reality of being Black in America during the Rodney King riots. It talks about the difference of being Black and well off and Black and poor. It's a coming of age story with a great commentary. I enjoyed it. I liked and cared about the characters, they were the reason why I got immersed in the story.
What I didn't love about it is the writing itself. The way the story was told made it a slow read. I don't know why the narration threw me off so much and whether it was that or my reading slump, but it took me a long time to finish the book.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and I think it's an important read. I wish I didn't read it while in a massive reading slump.

The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed is a slow burning story about self discovery.

It is 1992 in Los Angeles when Rodney King is horrifically beaten by the police. Protesters are angry and soon rioting and looting begin. But, despite being black, Ashley initially feels far removed from this. She lives in a beautiful home, in a nice neighborhood. Her parents are working professionals. She attends a prestigious private school. Her friends are the popular white kids and have been for as long as she can remember. She has never wanted for anything.

Ashley's sister Jo now lives in the protest areas. It is where she set up home with her husband - the one she married in secret. Despite their parents asking her to come home where they know she will be safe, Jo refuses. What she actually wants is to get involved in the protests. Ashley and Jo's father grew up not far from where Jo now lives. His brother, Ashley's uncle, still lives there, where runs the vacuum store their mother left them.

With all that is going on, Ashley soon starts questioning if the life she is living is the one she belongs in, and why.

I found myself putting this book aside about the 60-70% mark to take a break. When I picked it back up again to finish reading it, the pacing seemed to suddenly pick up. Everything that had been going on began to come together and the story gained momentum as it approached the ending.

The pacing moves slowly through the first 2/3rds of the book and I sometimes struggled to stay engaged. However, the subject matter is important and the story is worth a read, so I am glad I returned to it.

3.5/5 🌟 from me.

A warm thank you to Simon & Schuster UK, Simon & Schuster Children's UK, and NetGalley for the free copy of this novel in exchange for an impartial review.

I thought this was a well written book that covered a lot of relevant topics such as systematic racism, privilege, and identity, that relate what is going on in the world today. The character of Ashley is interesting because she is a character who has a lot of flaws herself and often doesn’t recognise her identity at the start of the novel. What I liked is you get to see her develop as a character and see her change and realise the mistakes she has made throughout the book. I thought this was a vital read and I gave it 4.5/5. stars. Would highly recommend it.

Full review. :

https://isobelsbookishthoughts.wordpress.com/2020/08/27/book-review-the-black-kids-by-christina-hammonds-reed/