This book was an amazing young adult own voices story. Yusef Salaam, who was one of the Exonerated Five, collaborated with Ibi Zoboi on this story about a young man who is convicted of a crime he did not commit. Written in verse, this book will draw you in, as the story of what happened the night that Amal was arrested is told. It was very realistic and the harsh life of juvie is not glossed over. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to better understand the terrible criminal justice and prison system. I highly recommend for fans of The 13th documentary and the When They See Us series.

This was a powerful book full of both pain and hope. It speaks to how hard it can be to stay true to who we are in the face of how others choose to see us. This story is co-written by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, who was one of the "Exonerated Five" in the Central Park Jogger case.. Amal, in imprisoned after taking part in a street brawl where the black boys are guilty by default. Abused by a system that confuses forced violent compliance with rehabilitation, Amal uses art and poetry to express his hopes, fears and regrets, while holding fast to those he loves outside to keep him strong within them.

If I could give this book more than five stars, I would! A novel in verse that reflects what Yusef went through as part of the Exonerated Five. The imagery with sometimes very few words in the page will leave you stunned. Such a riveting story that you won't want to put down until you finish it!

Loosely based on Yusef Salaam's experience as part of the (now) Exonerated Five, Punching the Air also draws inspiration from other stories of racial injustice like the Jena Six and the Scottsboro Boys. This novel in verse has a lyrical cadence that is both relevant to the current political climate and is beautifully devastating in how it addresses the unfairness of the criminal justice system. Zoboi's verse uses powerful, and often simple, language to draw the reader in and leaves them decrying the racial injustice that still exists in both the justice and prison systems.

Amal means hope, and that's exactly what this book is about. It is about losing hope in society and the world. It is also about gaining hope, and remembering that it's ultimately all you have. Amal is a young black teen who is just a teen. He got in trouble and sent to a juvenile detention facility. This book is moving and it will make you realize that our prisons and detention facilities are not there to actually help rehabilitate people, and get them back on their feet.

It's beautifully written in poetry and prose, and uses color and art to tell an amazing tale. I am so grateful I got to read it and ultimately share with my students.

Prose/poetry writing is finally getting the attention it deserves. As an educator it is so hard to get students into reading "larger books", but books written in this style allow for students to feel less intimidated. Zoboi not only makes the book more appealing for struggling readers, but ties in an amazing story with it.

The story is told from the point of view of Amal, who is wrongly incarcerated and is just struggling to survive physically and mentally as world attempts to break his spirit. With art and creativity as his escape from reality, Amal's future hangs in the balance of as a victim of his crime is in a come and the only person who can set him free.

If you love authors like Jason Reynolds or Elizabeth Acevedo, this is a book for you. It makes a create addition to any middle grade and higher classroom library or a paired text for social justice and racism units. So many wonderful stand alone chapters that can be used in any classroom setting.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

There is as much beauty as there is pain in this story. As Amal struggles to come to terms with what has happened, we learn about what lead to the choices he made. Reading this was almost as hard as watching DuVernay’s When They See Us because of the injustice on top of injustice.

It’s a great reminder for teachers to decolonize our classrooms and curriculums.

This is a powerful, moving story about the school to prison pipeline. It was a hard read, content-wise, but an important one. The poetry itself is astounding, and the story of finding hope, purpose, and a voice even when the world is trying to box you in is awe-inspiring. I cannot wait to see PUNCHING THE AIR spread its wings and fly. It's truly a tour de force for our times.

This will be on several award lists and it's deserved.

Issues I Had With This Book:
* My only "issue" was that I thought the comparisons of the prison system and slavery were done already and the authors didn't have anything different to say. I feel like that is more of a me problem and if you haven't read that metaphor before than it's new to you.

What I Liked About This Book:
* The Chapter Headings-Some of the chapters displayed growth and progression of events and I liked this strategy. I've never seen it before and I found myself flipping back and forth to find the connections.
* Amal's Situation-I don't want to say too much because I want you to discover it as you read it but I liked the pacing of Amal's situation and that's all I'll say.
* Amal's Support System
* The Ending
* The Cover and Title

Overall
I don't want to say too much because I think it's important for the reader to discover all the things. I thought is was very well written and quite honest about how young Black teens are PERCEIVED. If you are a teacher, please pay attention to the Ms. Rinaldi character.

I didn't give it a higher score because of the one dislike and I usually compare books to their contemporaries. I don't read a lot of books in verse about discrimination so the only book I could compare it to was Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. I gave that a 4.5 and I liked that one more because it was more ambiguous than Punching. Reynolds really left the reader to figure out most of the novel which is the type of writing I like. Punching doesn't do that; it sort of lays it all out for you. There is nothing wrong with that but it's not my personal favorite; I prefer books to be highly metaphorical. Because of that, I couldn't rate it higher but I can certainly see lots of 5 stars for this book.

With that being said, this is a great book for your teen or adult book club. There's lots to discuss and learn. It's very approachable for a reluctant reader while being very critical for advanced readers.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

What a beautiful, important book. Adults should read this too. This book is about a young black boy who has been arrested for a crime he did not commit, and it is written in amazing lyrical verse. One of the “Central Park Five” had a hand in writing this book. I think it will be a must-read anti-racism title for years to come.

This book punched me in the heart! It is such a needed book and the verse is so beautiful and amazing! I have read a lot of timely books lately and they all are sticking with me. I hope that one day we can all make a change.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

I am so grateful to have received an e-arc from NetGalley. This book broke my heart and opened my eyes. It was one I wanted to never put down but never wanted it to end. Amal’s voice reminded me of some of my former students and how they felt defeated and boxed in at the age of 10. This is a must read. Thank you to Ibi Zoboi and Dr. Yusef Salaam; this was sheer perfection.

I read this book in one sitting, I could not put it down. This book is written completely in verse, which will make it an easy and engaging read for young people. The prose contributed to the stream of consciousness like flow of Amal's story. Amal is a high school student who has been falsely convicted of a crime and is sent to juvenile detention while his lawyer and family on the outside fight for him. The book moves seamlessly between his outer world experiences and his consciousness as well as time. We shift between Amal's life before and leading up to the incident that landed him in custody and Amal's time in juvenile detention trying to make sense of his new reality. Zoboi and Salaam use the space on the page to further draw the reader into Amal's mind through word play and shape poetry. Punching the Air was a beautiful, heartbreaking, and timely read that illuminates a criminal system that has continued to disproportionately target Black and brown students, thirty years after Yusef Salaam and the Exonerated Five had the same experience. I highly recommend this book for students and adults alike as it illuminates the impacts of gentrification, respectability politics in the classroom and the transcendence of art for young people. This is absolutely a book to look out for this year.

Since I loved Pride and American Streets, I was thrilled to get an ARC copy of Punching the Air. It was also co-authored by one of the exonerated Central Park Five, which obviously made me curious to see his portrayal of juvenile detention and racial injustice.

I didn’t realize going in that it was a novel in prose, but I am glad it is. The novel focuses on Amal and his experience with juvenile incarceration. Amal is a good-hearted kid and a talented artist and poet, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His anger got the better of him, and he put a white boy in the hospital, or at least that’s what he’s convicted of.

As we go through this journey with Amal, the reader sees the school-to-prison pipeline in action as well as how educators and those in power have made being a black boy a crime.

The writing is powerful, but I only gave it 4 stars for a few reasons. First, I wanted to learn more about Kadon, Amal’s friend in the detention center. He serves as a motivator for Amal to voice his truth, but we don’t know much about Kadon himself. I would’ve liked Zaboi to dig deeper into that character. Secondly, I felt Amal did not really deal with his involvement in the injuries Jeremy sustained. He keeps saying he didn’t throw the last punch, which is obviously important, but he did throw the first. In my opinion, it weakens the cry of racial injustice when he refuses to grapple with the hard truth of his involvement and his anger.

Overall, I think this has the potential to be the next powerful, social justice themed YA novel. If you liked All American Boys or Dear Martin, you will also like Punching the Air.

This was so fantastic. I'm never quite sure if I'll enjoy prose oriented fiction like this, but it was great. Very timely story that I think YA readers will really enjoy. At first I had mixed feelings about the way the story ends. It feels like it just cuts off, but I can appreciate that the story is about the journey and the fact that this happens. Very much enjoyed.

"Maybe ideas segregate like in the days or
Dr. King and no matter how many marches
or Twitter hastags or Just for So-and-So

our mind's eyes and our eyes' minds
see the world as they want to
Everything already illustrated
in black and white"

POWERFUL.

This is a book that should be required reading in schools -- but won't be, for exactly the reasons why it should be.

I will admit -- this book took me a while to get into, but that is 100% my personal preference for prose over verse. It's a quick read, partly because of the verse, and partly because Zoboi and Salaam draw you into Amal's story and don't let you go. While it is partly inspired by Salaam's own experiences with wrongful conviction and imprisonment, Amal's story is fictional, but no less powerful in the commentary it offers on the criminal justice system, prison culture, and racial prejudice.

I was reminded, at times, of Felix Ever After -- both stories deal with BIPOC protagonists who are talented artists. The similarities stop there, as FEA is a hopeful, optimistic, trans love story, whereas PtA has a wildly different tone. I don't mean to draw comparisons between the two -- just that the connection got me thinking about the different paths lives can take.

For me, the most powerful moments of the book were the parallels between education and incarceration -- between school and prison. Zoboi and Salaam highlight the institutional biases at work -- especially through the adults, with Mrs. Rinaldi having a counterpart in Tattoo and a foil in Imani -- but also the power of the arts to heal and provide hope. The commentary applied to art history -- did only dead white man paint? -- is equally applicable to literature, and I thought Zoboi and Salaam's choice to have Amal be an artist who broke the rules and pushed the boundaries was (not to overuse the word) a powerful one.

Final thought: there were times when I found myself getting irritated and annoyed by Amal.
--Sidebar--
Maybe this was an intentional decision by Zoboi and Salaam. I can't know, unless they explicitly say so. But, yes, maybe they made him a flawed character on purpose -- to make him human. But what matters more is that Zoboi and Salaam were most certainly not writing with *my* feelings in mind. I don't think they care if I was uncomfortable or irritated while reading -- in fact, that might even have been a goal of theirs. I would like to hope that I am not so self-centered or privileged as to believe that this story -- this story about a young black boy whose future was irrevocably changed by one night -- was written with my thoughts and feelings in mind.
So this next bit is for readers like me:
--End Sidebar--
Check yourself. Use this as a moment to interrogate your reactions:
Hey. Why are you annoyed with him right now?
Well, he's skipping school.
Okay, but *why* do you find that annoying?
Well, it's *school* and that's disrespecting the teacher. [Slight bias, as I am also a teacher.]
What teacher?
Rinaldi---oh, the awful woman who's teaching a whitewashed subject, shutting down critical interrogation based on points of connection between text-and-audience, and just generally treating him different because he doesn't look like the other "AP kids." Oh, yep. Not a great look on me, there."

Again, I don't think Zoboi and Salaam wrote this book with the sole purpose of giving white people a chance to check their privilege. I do think that they wanted to give voice to the (typically) voiceless -- as Amal is constantly silenced, either through his art being erased, through being told to stop his rapping as juvie isn't a "music video," through poetry/art having to be "earned" or through the system that prioritizes comatose Jeremy Mathis' account over his own -- and highlight the systemic injustices at work.

But--the great thing about art (as this book shows) is that we each decode our own meaning. And you can recognize the dominant message Zoboi and Salaam wanted you to and you can use this as a teaching moment for yourself. They're not exclusive.

Based on Yusef Salaam’s own experience as one of the Central Park Five and ultimately the Exonerated Five, this is a powerful #ownvoices, diverse book that everyone should read. Verse novels are extremely popular in my school library. I predict that this one will be a favorite. Punching the Air follows Amal as he is wrongfully accused of a crime. His experience with the police, going to court, landing in jail, and being exonerated are all too common for a young Black man. This book reflects white privilege and the need for teachers to learn how to teach their BIPOC students. I will need multiple copies of this title as I share them with the high school English department and the middle school LA teachers. This unforgettable book is a must read.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Punching the Air is a lyrical, moving work of literature written in verse about the injustices of our criminal system. When black art student, Amal, is involved in an altercation in a white gentrified neighborhood, he is quickly arrested and his case put to trial. As he battles desperation, depression, and blatant racism and abuse of power in the juvenile justice system, his only hope is that the boy who was beaten will awaken and tell the truth about what really happened.

This is a story about finding healing through art and allowing oneself permission to be vulnerable and to have hope. It holds a mirror to the failures of the criminal justice system and iniquities of those with privilege and power and those without. It is a cry for prison reform, particularly as it relates to youth, and serves as a reminder to continue to take action in the ongoing fight for social justice. It is a beautiful book that shouldn't be missed.

Advanced copy provided courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This poignant novel in verse is not one I will quickly forget. For as Amal punched the air, reading his story surely punched me in the heart. And my heart broke, because I know this story is not just a story. This is the every day lives of our beloved black children. And until we stop the injustices surrounding their lives, stories like Amal’s will continue to happen day in and day out. This is a must read for middle school and high school students and teachers. It is an absolute must purchase for libraries. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to be an early reader.

Punching the Air is a superb contemporary YA novel told in verse. It follows Amal, a Black Muslim teen boy who is wrongly convicted of a violent crime and imprisoned. Written with Yusef Salaam, this is Ibi Zoboi's strongest work yet. Amal's story and voice felt so real and the verse format served the narrative perfectly.

This book is both beautiful and devastating as it follows Amal's conviction and imprisonment in the aftermath of a fight that results in a white teen in a coma. Amal is an artist and his passion for painting and writing is an integral part of his identity, as well as his survival while in prison. I loved that Punching the Air touches on art as expression, trauma, family, identity, mentorship, friendship, and prison abolition. One of the elements of this story that jumped out to me the most was Amal's relationship with his mother, whom he calls Umi. You could truly feel the tender, deep ties between them even as they are apart.

Punching the Air is an incredible read that I will be recommending again and again. The blurb promised it'd be perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Walter Dean Meyers, and Jason Reynolds--and I wholeheartedly agree with that! I've enjoyed Ibi Zoboi's previous books, but this one blew me away. I will absolutely be purchasing a copy for my library and recommending it to teen readers; librarians and educators serving middle and high school students should be sure to have a copy in their collections.