Let’s BookTalk: I’m OK by Patti Kim

from Goodreads.com

When your name is Ok, how can you be anything but ok?

Ok Lee is a 12 year-old Korean-American who wants to be a good son for his mother and make his father proud, which sometimes makes things less than ok. After his father died in a roofing accident, Ok wants to help make life easier for his mother, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way.

“I stare up at the ceiling. I knuckle my head twelve times, for each year I’ve been alive, mumbling, ‘pabo, pabo, pabo, pabo,’ just as my father would’ve done. Don’t call me stupid. My name is Ok” (p. 9).

In this coming of age story, Ok decides to learn a new skill and a talent in order to help bring in some extra cash. He soon comes to find that he is good at styling hair for the girls at school and everyone feels better with a style form Ok.

“Demand is high. Girls follow me, stop me in the halls, pass me notes. This volume of attention form the opposite sex is unprecedented” (p. 58).

Things seem to be going ok, once he masters a bankable skill, then his mom decides she will re-marry and all Ok can think is that it’s not ok. His father hasn’t been dead long, the man she is betrothed to is a thief, and he can’t help but think she is doing it all for money with an easier lifestyle.

When things aren’t going ok, having Ok for a name can be cruel.

Let's BookTalk: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

from Goodreads.com

“Once upon a time there was a hazel-eyed boy with dimples. I called him Khalil. The world called him a thug. He lived, but no nearly long enough, and for the rest of my life I’ll remember how he died” (p. 442-443).

Starr is a teenager caught between two worlds. One world is where she lives with her family and helps them with their store in Garden Heights; a low income, hardworking neighborhood, facing violence in the streets due to the competing gangs in the area. The other worlds is where she goes to school, Williamson. In this world there are gated communities, suburbs, and what some would call “champagne problems.”

Both her worlds are shattered, when a police officer guns down a childhood friend in her neighborhood during a “routine traffic” stop and all she could do was watch from the passenger side of her friend’s car.

Now, she must make a choice. Silence or Speak Out?

“I always said that if I saw it happen to somebody, I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world know what went down. Now I am that person, and I’m too afraid to speak” (p. 35).

Let's BookTalk: Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

from Goodreads.com

“Ruth and me are free, Pastor. Miss Finch freed us in her will. Momma, too, if had lived. It was done up legal, on paper with wax seals” (p. 9). Isabel Gardener is a slave in the year 1777 with a promise of freedom, but a corrupt system has her and her sister sold off to a high society family in New York.

Curzon, another slave who dreams of freedom, which has led him to ally himself with the Patriots, a radical group wanting to divide from the British monarchy to be free. He talks Isabel into being a spy for them, as her “owners” are British sympathizers who know of an impending British invasion.

Isabel will not be a slave and finds her own way to fight for her freedom and possibly even the freedom of a nation?

Let's BookTalk: Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

from Goodreads.com

There is power in a name, his momma taught him that much before she died. His name is Bud, not Buddy. If she had wanted him to be called Buddy, she would have named him Buddy.

Bud learned many things from his momma, except who his father was, she only left a flyer for a band as a clue. Now Bud is a runaway orphan in Flint, MI on a mission to get out of town before he is the most wanted boy in town. Life isn’t easy for Bud and with a depression going on across the country things can easily go from bad to worse.

Yet, Bud has these rules that help him stay alive and out of trouble, almost. With only an old card board suitcase to carry his few prized possessions in the world, Bud goes on a journey to find his father and maybe the allusive dream of a home.