Reynolds quietly brings attention to the fact that African Americans are disproportionately affected by diabetes compared to white people in America. Her adopted parents are also her uncle and aunt. Her birth mother is in the picture but is disabled and in a wheelchair from diabetes. Patty, is adopted and her adoptive mother is white.

Not only are the other three characters introduced in Ghost, but they also reveal the secret burdens they are covering though they are nothing alike. He has natural ability to run and so it’s a small miracle that he ends up hanging around the track team and running for spite when he is discovered. His father is in jail after trying to kill them with a gun in a drunken rage. Ghost lives in a project with his single mom. I thought Track would be an inner-city story and Ghost fits in this category. Instead, Reynolds places the four characters on a club team run by a coach who won an Olympic gold medal and drives a taxi for a living. That would make the kids more alike on a socio-economic level unless the school was private. Reynolds instead creates four characters who are all new to the team.Īnother obvious move would be to make this a high school or middle school track team. An easy move would be to make the four books about the four people in the race: leg 1, leg 2, leg 3, and leg 4. Track is a four book series that starts with Ghost. In fact, I’d award Jason Reynolds for Track series in the award’s inaugural year. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (even if it is technically not a series because the books connect)Īnd of course, Track series by Jason Reynolds. Some of the series that I’d nominate for my made up award are: I would not put a timeframe on when the books are published.Extra points for connecting the stories in each book.The series should be more than the sum its parts.Each book within the series should be able to stand on its own.(I hate those endlessly long series that are like a long-winded money grab.) The book series must have between 3-7 books.Have you noticed that there are no awards for book series? Why is that? I’d make the criteria: I think there should be Newbery type of award for middle grade book series.

Mark lewisohn books