this was amazing. books written in verse don't always work for me, but this was really great. the writing is so beautiful and the story is really impactful.

I loved it. I don’t normally like books in verse, but this was real and gorgeously written. Even better that it is inspired by a true story & by the racial injustice we see running rampant. Highly recommend!

This novel in verse was devastating and heartbreaking to listen to, but at the same time is very timely, relevant, and necessary reading for today. Listening to the audio was both powerful and painful, but I found the narration to just be okay...but maybe that is because I had to speed it up. This book is getting a bit of buzz so I may read it again with the actual book instead. My heart was actually aching while listening and it didn't sit well with me. Books like this continue to open my eyes to more of the injustice and racism of the “justice system.”

a heart-wrenching ya contemporary of finding hope in the darkness.

when i heard that "punching the air" was a collaboration between author ibi zoboi and prison reform activist/poet yusef salaam, i immediately added it to the top of my reading list. i have read many ya books attempting to tackle big, messy, complex issues (e.g. sexual assault, drug addiction, homelessness, systemic racism) with varying degrees of nuance and success; "punching the air" is among the best of the best. the story is written in verse, weaving powerful metaphor together with a nuanced but direct narrative of how systemic racism predetermines the life trajectories of many bipoc. zoboi and salaam are able to convey the very real prejudices and microaggressive behaviors present in the daily lives of bipoc without generalizing amal's character so much so as to become depersonalized. i further applaud the authors for slipping in the names of black artists, authors, and civil rights leaders, among others, in a manner that nudges the reader towards further reading and learning without feeling preachy. all in all, "punching the air" is phenomenal and i highly recommend it.

one small note: i listened to the audiobook version, and was not a fan of the narration. when i read it again – and i most definitely will read it again – i will pick up the physical or e-book copy.

thank you to netgalley and harper audio/balzer + bray for an audio-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Wow this powerful book has been published at the right time. The story of a African American teenager is at the wrong place, at the wrong time, but did not throw the first punch. After a fight over a territorial park between two different neighborhoods we find our main character locked up in a juvenile center. While incarcerated he must learn to survive and find himself through his art, and his family.
The narrator was very convincing, very captivating. Not sure if it was the download you sent me, I did have to speed it up to 1.25 or it was to slow. Good High School book club book.

Thank you, NetGalley for providing me an e-arc of the book. I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audiobooks of Punching the Air, and really appreciated the prose and verses and how it was not just a novel.
I find myself wishing I had this when I was younger, and how important this is now as a black person in America.

I went into this one semi-blind. I knew the premise, but not that one of the authors was a member of the Exonerated Five. His influence on this story was so deep and heartfelt. The story itself is heartbreaking. 16 year old Amal is sent to prison for a crime that he didn't commit, and the only person who can free him is a white boy who just happens to be in a coma. As a white person, I HATE that I could read this and feel like it's straight out of a news headline now. I hate that things like this are still happening. Amal was such a brilliant soul. He was creative, smart, and angry for all the right reasons. The bonds he formed in prison were so touching. His impact on the other prisoners was very heartfelt. I loved everything about this story. I couldn't really do it justice or say enough things about it. It broke my heart in several places and then put it back together again.

Punching the Air is one of those books that wraps around you, and engulfs you. a very powerful and moving novel told in verse. You follow Amal as he is wrongfully convicted of a violent crime and is sent to the juvenile facility. It shows a part of our criminal justice system that most people don't know about.

I loved the narrator, Ethan Herrise. He brought the story to life for me! This is a must-read book!!

This novel is about a young man’s struggle to be a young black body in a world that is not set up for your success. A life upended by one moment gone terribly awry, with no way to prove the narrative falsely. Punching the Air is a glimpse into Amal Shahid's life after that terrible incident leaving a young white body in a coma. A brilliant artist and poet who has bared his spirit and thoughts through words and pictures not everyone can comprehend or chooses to. A story of young man in a juvenile penal system fighting against the urge to accept the hand he’s been dealt and figuring out how to use the rage that has been built up inside of him. A young mother that has fought to make a good life for her child and prepare him for the reality of what it means to be cautious in a world where nothing will ever come easy. Punching the Air, does a commendable job of exploring the complexities of an existence that a large fraction of the population experiences and bringing some awareness to the forefront of those that never will.

DNF at 79%. This is hard to rate. Important subject matter but I was bored. I’ve read other books about blacks who were wrongly incarcerated like This Is My America which I LOVED. But this book is mostly about him being in prison and his thoughts. I like more action in my books. Also the Net Galley app is not very functional when the book is sped up to 2x speed. It makes the audio sound tinny and like a robot. This definitely affected my enjoyment of the book.

Heavy, powerful, raw, but beautiful. I highly recommend everyone read Punching the Air.

Amal, an artistic black teen, makes a choice one evening that has immeasurable consequences. When he finds himself in juvie for a crime he is adamant he didn't do, he is angry and sad. He turns to his art and love of writing to find hope and solace. Punching the Air is a powerful own voices story, closely shadowing events that shaped one of the author's lives; it is a story of resiliency.

The audiobook version is well-done; thankfully, you do not lose the beauty of the prose.

About the story :
I think it is impossible not to be touched by Amal story. To feel for him and to feel rage towards... Well towards everything. The story was a simple one, but well executed. I don't want to say more, because it's a fast read and I think it's better to go into it knowing nothing.

About the format :
I both listened to the audiobook and read it with my eyes. And I think the way to go is with your eyes. A lot of editing went into the structure of the words, the way they show and the page, the rhythm of the sentences. Even though the audiobook gave Amal a voice you can connect to, I didn't think it portrayed that well the poetry and rythm of the text. Listening to the audiobook, I wouldn't even know this was written in verses ! And there's also different drawing in the texts that helps you connect with Amal and his art.

About the writing :
I thought the way things were said, the imagery behind it, was beautiful and infused wonderfully this message if hope and liberty. The different effects, with the way the words were put on the pages and the rythm, were very esthetically pleasing. It made the object itself a work of art in all its component (cover, the way the text is displayed, the drawings, etc.) I'll be reading more of Ibi Ziboi that's for sure.

I listened to Punching the Air on audio and highly recommend it in this format. This is such an important book, especially now as more and more people are finally waking up to the reality of racism and an often unjust "justice system". Written in verse, this book centers around Amal, a Black Muslim teen who is falsely accused of a violent crime. He sees his aspirations of being an artist dying and he can't help but feel like he's a disappointment to his mother. The only thing I didn't like was the lack of a clear ending. While the book was wonderful overall and also so very needed, I would have loved to have an ending that wrapped everything up.

If you read “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas and liked that then you will almost certainly like this one.

In a dream world, we would all embrace our inner Mister Roger and love one another no matter our race, religion, income, education, illnesses, where we live, etc. Our books would be diverse because we would be. Unfortunately that is not the world we live in. So when you want a good book with more diversity than your run of the mill best seller, you either have to go to smaller more indie writers or read a book like this one that is tackling how our differences tear us apart.

The plot is fairly simple. Our young protagonist Amal finds himself on the wrong side of the law. He doesn’t really understand how he ended up in jail, but he did. He didn’t want to fight, but the pressure to fit in is very real. Reading this as an adult is tough. There are times I wanted to yell at Amal “It doesn’t matter if you didn’t throw the last punch” for example. I never fought anyone but my brother and never felt the pressure to fight, but I did see a fight or two. And I don’t remember anyone telling us just how serious a fist fight can be. If anything it was more a “we don’t care if you fight, just don’t do it around us because we don’t want to have to actually do something about it” attitude. As an adult I have seen stories of people severely injured or even killed from a punch or two. So already we have failed kids by the time the fight even occurred. But right when I was feeling pretty frustrated with Amal’s view of the fight, we learned more..

As the story develops we learn about Amal’s life before, during, and after the fight. Before and after he spent any time in jail. We see injustice. Adults using their power to harm a child. We see Amal have to go through typical teenager things like flirting with the girl he likes via letters instead of in person. We see a young man who just wants to hang out with anyone who has his interests as well as a young man pressured to fight, pressured to pick a clique just for a shot at survival.

This book is basically just another look at a system so broken that it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
It is an important read, not just for the YA audience it is targeting but also for adults. Many seem to have forgotten what life was like when they were younger but also just refuse to acknowledge any one else’s experiences that differed from theirs. Some of it is race, some of it is who raised you, some of it is income, some of it is just where you live or work or go to school. Sadly, I do not think those who need to read and truly hear and process what books like these are telling us will pick this one up, but they should.

I read the book in audiobook form. The narrator was beyond good. I felt like he truly was Amal and not just another voice actor / narrator. He brought the story to life.

Based on Salaam's own experience, as part of the exonerated five, this book follows Amal, a young African American guy, who is incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit. Amal is a beautiful human being, with love for his friends and family, a talent with art, and a wonder with words. However, the color of his skin changes the way society treats him. While a white person may be able to speak their mind or make a mistake, Amal is listed as disruptive and condemned. While going through his sentence, Amal grapples with what it is to be black in America. In this novel-in-verse, Amal gives voice to the reality of his experiences.

This book was gorgeous. The writing was gorgeous. I think that this book is going to show up in the Youth Media Awards. I would have selected it as my mock Printz pick, but because I loved it so much, I wanted to talk about it ASAP. The reader of this book was stellar, which was to be expected, since he played Salaam in the Netflix docuseries, "When They See Us". I am now desperate to watch that series. This novel is a rich springboard for discussing race in contemporary America and was a great performance.

This novel in verse is stunning, tender and tough. It tells the story of Amal Shahid, a 15 year old black boy who is accused of violent assault and wrongly sent to prison, and is loosely based on the life of Yusef Salaam who lived through a similar experience as one of the Exonerated Five. The media presents him to the world as just another thug, but his friends and family know the truth: Amal is smart, a painter and a poet, a tenacious and gentle soul. His family is shown throughout the trial and his imprisonment as a strong support network, encouraging him to keep his mind free, even if his body is not.

The poems in this book touch on the school to prison pipeline, racism, slavery, the need for diversity in the arts, learning to lean on the faith you have in yourself and encourages readers to do like Amal and speak their truth. The poems are mostly narrative, describing Amal's day to day, and his reckoning with himself, the other boys around him, and the system he is in. Interspersed are gorgeous lyric poems that evoke fantastic metaphors to eloquently talk about racial disparity, art and faith. I have a feeling I missed out on some illustration on the pages by reading the audiobook.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed in the narrator. I listened at 1.25 speed because it felt very slowly read, with too much silence between verses and poems. I also had really hoped for more passion from the narrator, like in slam poetry, but for the most part it was a quiet, meditative recitation, which in the context of the story isn't bad, but just felt lacking.

A beautifully written and emotional novel in verse inspired by the experiences of co-author Yusef Salaam, one of the now exonerated Central Park Five. Like Yusef, Amal (which means hope in Arabic) is wrongly convicted of a crime and serves time in juvenile prison. Amal and his family do not give up hope that justice will be served and while incarcerated he turns to his art and poetry as an outlet. A timely and powerful book. #blacklivesmatter

This book will appeal to reluctant readers and the boys will like that it has a male main character. The topics of racial inequity and the unbalanced representation of minorities in our prisons are explored. The writing is peppered with poetry which I found similar to The Poet X and With the Fire on High.

Punching the Air is the literary gut punch that so many people need in order to wake up and witness the systemic racism involving mass incarceration of Black boys and men. Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam deliver a poignant and harrowing account of 16 year old Amal Shadid's wrongful incarceration and the justice system that continues to beat down those who it is supposed to help.

This story is written in verse, which I think allows for even more emotion to drip from every single page. You feel Amal's pain and despair, but yet, he still clings to his humanity even in a system that is hellbent on destroying him.

I can't recommend this incredible book enough. This should be a must read for everyone.

This book explores injustices in the justice system regarding black men and boys. A powerful message about the art, education and believing in yourself when no one else does.

A must read YA book for 2020.