The Heart of What It Is To Be A Teenager.

By Len Vlahos    |   Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - Off the Shelf I recently heard author Jason Reynolds speak at a book event in Brooklyn, promoting his new young adult novel The Boy in the Black Suit, the follow-up to last year’s When I Was the Greatest. At first I was surprised that the audience at the event was almost entirely African-American. I was one of only a handful of white people in the room. If I stop to think about it, it makes sense. When I Was the Greatest, Reynolds’ young adult debut (his first novel was My Name Is Jason. Mine Too., coauthored with Jason Griffin), is about African-American kids growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It’s a tough neighborhood with guns, drugs, and a shared experience of what it means to be black in the city. But the characters in Reynolds’ book—what they feel, how they relate to one another and the world—are universal. The story is a treatise on what it means to be a teen . . . anywhere and anytime. This is a book that should be embraced by all audiences. More