2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults: Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Stone, N. (2017). DEAR MARTIN. Random House Childrens Books.

Dear Martin by Nic Stone was noted on the 2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults by YALSA. It was also awarded as New York Times Bestseller,  William C Morris Finalist, and Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Finalist. This book is a perfect example of the #weneeddiversebooks initiative.

Dear Martin by Nic Stone tells the story of Justyce and his dealings with racial profiling and police brutality. The story starts with Justyce trying to do the right thing, when he has followed his ex girlfriend who is drunk out to her car to keep her from driving home after her best friend has given up on convincing her. As he is trying to help her into her car, and her resisting, he is stopped by the police, thrown to the ground and hand cuffed. While being bitter about the whole situation, he realizes that it could have easily gone worse. Justyce is on the track to go to an IVY League college and has a scholarship to a prestigious prep-school, Braselton.

As a way of dealing with his recent interaction, he decides to write letters to Martin Luther King Jr. 'to be more like Martin.' In school, Justyce is valedictorian and captain of the debate team. Throughout the story, Justyce deals with a lot of discrimination both subtle and blatant. In his debate class, racial issues are often discussed- like when one of the white students in his class blaming affirmative action when Justyce got accepted into Yale early acceptance while he didn't, despite the fact that Justyce had a higher SAT score and a similar GPA. Also, Manny, his best friend, whose parents are very prominent successful African Americans in their communities. While Justyce and Manny are out for a drive too cool off after an issue with one of the students at school, Manny plays his music too loud for another driver and falls victim to a shooting by an off duty cop. Throughout this year, Justyce has to look at all of the injustices that he has been served and watch his best friend's killer go free he has to figure out how to deal.

This book came out around the same time as Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give. It deals with a lot of the same themes, just in a different way. I really appreciated being able to read a novel with similar themes and events to The Hate U Give, but with a male point of view. I think these two novels are very similar while showing how just having a similar situation does not mean you will always react in the same way. This is a coming of age novel for Justyce (and arguably many of the other characters as well) when he realizes that racial bias comes in many forms- same as when his mother had a big problem with him dating a white girl, just to a different and lesser degree than most racial biases we see towards the black community. I think it gives an acute and accurate depiction of the events while tactfully showing how he grew from the situation rather than got stuck in it. It ends on a more optimistic note than most other books on this topic which is refreshing, but I am not sure if it is as realistic. I hope that it is, but I only have these books as my windows into their experience.


Other books you might like if you enjoyed Dear Martin:


  • The Hate U Give  by Angie Thomas 
  • Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson 
  • All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
Source: 
Ngilbert. (2018, February 15). 2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/yalsa/2018-best-fiction-young-adults

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