Jerome Rogers, twelve years old, is playing outside his Chicago home with a borrowed toy gun when a police officer shoots him dead, mistaking the toy for a threat. The novel is Jerome's own narration, alternating the days before his death with the days after: as a ghost he watches his family's grief and his community's anger, and he is not alone — he is one of the "ghost boys," joined in particular by Emmett Till, who helps him read his own killing inside a longer American history. The one living person who can see Jerome is Sarah, the daughter of the officer who shot him. The book won the Walter Award and the 2019 Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and was a New York Times bestseller.
Author: Jewell Parker Rhodes · Original publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (New York), 2018
