Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary:  When Albany (CA) High School junior Charles created a “fake” Instagram account for posting racist memes, he thought it was a way to be funny that his friends would appreciate.  But some of the Black girls he targeted found the account in 2017, and the discovery ripped the school and the community apart.  The school administration tried both traditional methods of discipline (suspension and expulsion) as well as a disastrous restorative justice mediation session to try to bring healing.  A messy combination of lawsuits, school board confrontations, and conversations among the kids themselves eventually allowed them to move on, but the reverberations continue to affect the students, now young adults, and the community.  496 pages; grades 9-12.

Pros:  I don’t usually review young adult books, but I loved Dashka Slater’s The 57 Bus, and a long train ride gave me some extra time to dive into this book.  Like her previous book, this one looks at a hateful incident through the eyes of teenagers, emphasizing the devastating impact on the victims, while digging into the motivations of the perpetrators.  All the kids are presented sympathetically, even the boys, who, with one striking exception, came to see, at least to a certain extent, the harm that they caused.  There are no easy answers, and diving into the complexity of the issues would make this an amazing book discussion choice for high school and possibly older middle school students.

Cons:  It was sadly evident how ill-prepared educational institutions are to deal with cyberbullying and social media in general.