New Kid

Chapter 11’s “The Baseball Hall of Shame!” sketch demonstrates the obstacles that Black children in the city face in sports. Jordan doesn’t know anything about lacrosse, the “sport where you catch a ball with a net on a stick” that people associate with wealthy schools (190). He only knows about baseball from video games and television, and Drew’s neighborhood doesn’t have parks at all. All the spring sports that Jordan lists share a common problem: they are too expensive for lower-income families. They require costly equipment, large parks that urban neighborhoods rarely have, and specialized training from a young age. In comparison, basketball only needs a ball, hoop, and pavement. As a football quarterback, Drew did play in a game with specialized equipment and a large field, but he wouldn’t necessarily need them to train his passing and leadership skills. Lack of access in childhood leads to lower representation at the professional level; Major League Baseball, which celebrates boundary-breaking athletes like Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron, is now struggling to address its declining number of Black players.

Chapters 12 and 13 represent New Kid’s climax as Jordan challenges his main antagonists in the student body and faculty. Ms. Rawle immediately assumes Drew is responsible for Andy’s fall, and Drew would have faced suspension or even expulsion without Jordan’s defense. Craft returns to the metaphor of Jordan falling through space as he is tired of both Andy receiving no repercussions for his behavior and Drew becoming a problem student just because he sees no alternative. Rather than wishing to be Superman or Batman, Jordan becomes his own superhero. To give the sequence some humor, Drew reveals one of the bullies from the previous chapters is the Deandre that Ms. Rawle mistakes him for.

Jordan then faces negative and positive challenges to his highly personal art. Ms. Rawle uses the book to justify her assumptions that Jordan is angry. This belief mirrors critics of social activists who want to portray them as bitter and overreacting so that people don’t take their concerns seriously. But Jordan doesn’t hate RAD; he is just explaining the underlying problems that students and faculty either don’t know about or ignore. His role-reversal question to Ms. Rawle, symbolized with a cherub mic drop, demonstrates how platitudes about marginalized students being special are usually to defend the status quo.

As a cartoonist, Jordan initially has limited interest in Ms. Slate’s abstract art; Craft depicts him decaying as he listens to her verbose explanations about art. While some art teachers might condemn cartooning and other low-brow art styles, Ms. Slate advocates the value of artistic expression as a complement to other forms. Jordan’s abstract painting, which uses the school colors, is as true to his internal self as his comics are; Ms. Slate comments on how it represents his frustrations.

Chapter 14 ends New Kid on a positive note by showing Jordan’s growth over the school year. He now has strong relationships with his friends and recognition for his artwork. He is proactive in helping others as he encourages Alexandra to overcome her insecurities about her scar, and he signs Andy’s yearbook as a goodwill gesture. He doesn’t wear his hoodie to school because he is no longer afraid of how he appears to other people, and his neighborhood friends accept him for who he is. As his parents remark, Jordan is no longer the new kid in school, but a new kid with confidence.

The chapter titles are homages to the baseball movie Field of Dreams, psychological thriller Fight Club, space adventure Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and TV drama Mad Men.