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- Jason Reynolds (born December 6, 1983, Washington, D.C., U.S.) is an American author of young adult books that deal with themes including violence, masculinity, and the experiences of communities of colour.
www.britannica.com › biography › Jason-Reynolds
Actor: Escape Through Time. Jason Reynolds was born on September 3, 1986 in Columbia Tennessee to parents Wendy and Robert Reynolds. He has attended schools including Colegio Americano in Mexico, Morning Creek Elementary in California and the English International College in southern Spain.
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Jun 13, 2022 · I’ve spent my life believing the Amazing Spider-Man is in my corner, because he built up and fortified my personal superhero, writes Jason Reynolds.
Jason Reynolds (born December 6, 1983) is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audience.
- Overview
- Growing up near D.C.
- Success as a writer
- National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
Jason Reynolds (born December 6, 1983, Washington, D.C., U.S.) American author of young adult books that deal with themes including violence, masculinity, and the experiences of communities of colour. His work, which often combines difficult scenes with a touch of humour, has won multiple awards, and some of his books have been named finalists for ...
Reynolds, who was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in nearby Oxon Hill, Maryland. He began writing poetry when he was nine years old after listening to the rhymes and rhythm of rap music. He was particularly interested in the lyrics of Queen Latifah and her album Black Reign (1993). Reynolds has recounted how he stopped reading books for several years because he could not find any that were relevant to his upbringing in a poor Black community, and he did not read an entire novel until age 17. He remained very focused on poetry, however, and that interest persisted as he entered high school and college.
While in college, Reynolds worked at a bookstore in Washington, D.C., that featured authors of African descent. Eventually, he discovered Black writers such as Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. Despite struggling at times with English classes, Reynolds graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a bachelor’s degree in English in 2005.
After graduation Reynolds moved to Brooklyn with his friend Jason Griffin. Together they published the autobiographical My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. (2009), which tells the story of two best friends who help each other follow their respective dreams. Reynolds wrote the book’s poems and Griffin contributed its artwork. It was not a financial success, so Reynolds took various jobs to support himself. He even had to live in his car for a time and struggled to continue writing. One friend encouraged Reynolds to express his own voice in his writing, which helped him to press forward. He shared the same advice with an audience in 2017: “That story that you’re looking for? You already have it, inside. It’s you.”
Reynolds’s first published young adult novel is When I Was the Greatest (2014), about a teenager in an urban neighbourhood who grapples with friendship, family, and his relationship with where he lives. It won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent. Reynolds began to write prolifically after that and published several novels within the next few years.
In All American Boys (2015), which Reynolds wrote with Brendan Kiely, a Black teenager is beaten by a white policeman, and a white teenage witness has to decide whether he will speak out while the surrounding community begins to take sides. The Boy in the Black Suit (2015), which examines a low point in the life of a 17-year-old boy and his subsequent friendship with a girl who helps him cope, explores its characters’ relationship with death and the nuances of grief. As Brave As You (2016) centres on a young boy and his brother who spend the summer with their grandparents. Delving into the themes of a family’s legacy, forgiveness, and what it means to come of age, it won the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature.
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Reynolds’s Track series follows middle-school students on a track team. Books in the series include Ghost (2016), Patina (2017), and Sunny and Lu (both 2018). The series investigates family relationships, grief, and navigating responsibility as a young adult. Meanwhile, Reynolds wrote Long Way Down (2017), a novel in verse. It is a story about a teenager who must decide whether he is going to avenge the killing of his brother, thereby obeying the social code of his community, or whether he will stop the cycle of violence. Long Way Down reflects some of Reynolds’s personal experiences: when he was 19, he lost one of his friends to murder.
Reynolds’s Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks (2019) is a children’s book that recounts the adventures of 10 groups of kids as they leave school. He then collaborated with Ibram X. Kendi on the book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020), a young adult version of Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016). Reynolds and Kendi’s book was released the same year that Reynolds became the Library of Congress’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a position he held until 2022.
In 2022 Reynolds again teamed with Griffin, on Ain’t Burned All the Bright. The book, with Reynolds’s verse and Griffin’s collage artwork, revolves around Black life in America, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests that arose after the death of George Floyd in May 2020. Reynolds also launched My Mother Made Me, a four-episode podcast with his mother, in 2022. They discuss his upbringing, their spirituality, and the memories they share.
Nov 21, 2023 · Learn about Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. Read a summary of the verse novel, find an in-depth analysis of its plot, and understand its ending.
- In Long Way Down , the main character Will has just lost his older brother, Shawn, who was shot and killed. Street violence is common in their neig...
- The message in Long Way Down is that violence is not always the answer. The "an eye for an eye" mentality only serves to perpetuate a cycle of viol...
- The main idea of Long Way Down is to understand Will's dilemma and rationale for wanting to seek revenge on his brother's killer. While he might fe...
- The ending of the novel Long Way Down is open-ended. It leaves the reader to interpret the facts given and come to their own conclusion about what...
Oct 8, 2019 · Jason Reynolds conjures ten tales (one per block) about what happens after the dismissal bell rings, and brilliantly weaves them into one wickedly funny, piercingly poignant look at the detours we face on the walk home, and in life.
Aug 9, 2021 · The first time we see Castle running, it’s not during a race—he and his mother are escaping his father, who is wielding a gun. Reynolds explained that the scene was drawn from the life of a ...
