Long Way Down
The Graphic Novel
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)
Jason Reynolds’s Newbery Honor, Printz Honor, and Coretta Scott King Honor–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel Long Way Down is now a gripping, galvanizing graphic novel, with haunting artwork by Danica Novgorodoff.
Will’s older brother, Shawn, has been shot.
Dead.
Will feels a sadness so great, he can’t explain it. But in his neighborhood, there are THE RULES:
No. 1: Crying.
Don’t.
No matter what.
No. 2: Snitching
Don’t.
No matter what.
No. 3: Revenge
Do.
No matter what.
But bullets miss. You can get the wrong guy. And there’s always someone else who knows to follow the rules…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Will, 15, is following his neighborhood's well-established rules don't cry, don't snitch, but do get revenge "if someone you love/ gets killed" when he leaves his apartment, intent on killing whoever murdered his older brother, Shawn. He's emboldened by the gun tucked into his waistband: "I put my hand behind my back/ felt the imprint/ of the piece, like/ another piece/ of me/ an extra vertebra,/ some more/ backbone." As Will makes his way to the ground floor of his building, the elevator stops to accept passengers, each an important figure from his past, all victims of gun violence. Are these ghosts? Or is it Will's subconscious at work, forcing him to think about what he intends to do and what it will accomplish? The story unfolds in the time it takes for the elevator to descend, and it ends with a two-word question that hits like a punch to the gut. Written entirely in spare verse, this is a tour de force from a writer who continues to demonstrate his skill as an exceptionally perceptive chronicler of what it means to be a black teen in America. Ages 12 up.
