A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée
This gentle but earnest middle grade novel takes on everything from protesting against racism to navigating changing friendships in an engaging and emotionally astute way. Twelve-year-old Shayla Willows has always been afraid of getting into trouble, but when Black Lives Matter protests begin to take place in her city in response to a police shooting of an unarmed Black man, she starts to understand that sometimes “getting into trouble” doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong but rather that you’re standing up for what’s right.
This book paints a strong portrait of Shayla’s family and the way they talk about race, showing how individual family members can have different responses to racism and injustice. Hana, Shayla’s older sister, is the most outspoken, actively participating in the BLM protests and speaking out against racism whenever she sees it. While Shayla’s parents are clear in their support of Hana, they are also protective of Shayla, seeming not to want to expose her to the full weight of everything that’s happening in their city and the world at large. Hana makes up for their protectiveness, directly criticizing her younger sister’s lack of Black friends: Shayla’s two best friends are Isabella, who is Puerto Rican, and Julia, who is Japanese American. Friends for years and proudly terming themselves the “United Nations” in homage to their racial diversity, the three girls start to find tensions fracturing them along the lines which they thought made them strong as each girl struggles to feel seen in the fullness of her racial identity.
A Good Kind of Trouble is a great book for group reading and discussion: it doesn’t perfectly resolve all of the problematic dynamics it sets up, and fruitful discussion could definitely arise around these sticky spots. One of Julia’s friends Stacy, who is Chinese American, consistently and blatantly appropriates African American Vernacular English, a behavior which Shayla never calls Stacy out for despite how much it clearly bothers her. Another character, Bernard, who is described as dark skinned and big, is treated in racist ways not only by teachers and administration, but by Shayla herself, her internalized anti-Blackness manifesting as she reacts with fear when Bernard so much as smiles at her. While this anti-Blackness is called out by Hana, and Shayla eventually does befriend Bernard, it would have been empowering to watch Shayla more fully process the implications of her reactions to Bernard.
A rich and readable middle grade novel that is engaging enough to attract even younger readers, A Good Kind of Trouble is a great book about race, racism, and standing up for what you believe in that could be taken even deeper through continued and nuanced discussion.