New York Times and USA Today bestseller Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Walter Award Winner
Goodreads Finalist for Best Teen Book of the Year Time Magazine Best Book of the Year
Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year School Library
Journal Best Book of the Year Kirkus Best Book of the Year New York Public Library Best Book of
the YearFrom award-winning bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef
Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully
incarcerated. A must-read for fans of Jason Reynolds Walter Dean Myers and Elizabeth
Acevedo.The story that I thoughtwas my lifedidn't start on the dayI was bornAmal Shahid has
always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school because of a biased system
he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated. Then one fateful night an altercation in a
gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. Boys just being boys turns out to be true only
when those boys are white.The story that I thinkwill be my lifestarts todaySuddenly at just
sixteen years old Amal is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair
and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words his art. This never should
have been his story. But can he change it?With spellbinding lyricism award-winning author Ibi
Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how
one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth in a system designed to strip
him of both.
