Miles Morales SPIDER MAN

By: Jason Reynolds
Location: FIC REY
Genre: Marvel and Spider man

"Everyone gets mad at hustlers, especially if you're on the victim side of the hustle. And Miles knew hustling was in his veins."

Miles Morales is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents, chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke, crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He's even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he's Spider Man.

But lately, Miles's spidey-sense has been on the fritz. When a misunderstanding leads to his suspension from school, Miles begins to question his abilities. After all, his dad and uncle were Brooklyn jack-boys with criminal records. Maybe kids like Miles aren't meant to be superheroes. Maybe Miles should take his dad's advice and focus on saving himself.

As Miles tries to get his school life back on track, he can't shake the vivid nightmares that continue to haunt him. Nor can he avoid the relentless buzz of his spidey-sense every day in history class, amidst his teacher's lectures on the historical "benefits" of slavery and the modern-day prison system. But after his scholarship is threatened, Miles uncovers a chilling plot, one that puts his friends, his neighborhood, and himself at risk.

It's time for Miles to suit up.

"Before reading this novel, I thought: COOL! A Black and Puerto Rican superhero slinging webs and saving lives! 

After reading, I think the same thing... but MAN is there so much more to this book than that. 

Miles Morales, in addition to the pressure of an un-ignorable spidey-sense that alerts him to people in danger (people he struggles to resist the compulsion to save), also has to deal with things like racism, relative poverty, being one of only a handful of black kids in an elite private school, keeping his grades up so he doesn't lose his scholarship, not succumbing to the pull of the streets when the financial going gets really tough, watching as people from his neighborhood DO succumb. This novel shows that every decision to save someone else is a decision to potentially wreck his own life. Because being a black superhero isn't the same as being a white one. The stakes are higher. 
Trying to keep this review spoiler-free but the villain here... MAN! Just immaculate. All I'll say is this: Jason has knocked it out of the park.  Nic Stone