Courage by Barbara Binns

Courage

by Barbara Binns

For fans of Jason Reynolds and Kwame Alexander, a poignant and timely novel about race, class, and second chances.

Ever since T'Shawn's dad died, his mother has been struggling to keep the family afloat. So when he's offered a spot on a prestigious diving team at the local private swim club, he knows that joining would only add another bill to the pile.

But T studies hard and never gets into trouble, so he thinks his mom might be willing to bear the cost... until he finds out that his older brother, Lamont, is getting released early from prison.

Luckily, T'Shawn is given a scholarship, and he can put all his frustration into diving practices. But when criminal activity increases in the neighborhood and people begin to suspect Lamont, T'Shawn begins to worry that maybe his brother hasn't left his criminal past behind after all.

And he struggles to hold on to the hope that they can put the broken pieces of their damaged relationship back together.

Reviewed by readingwithwrin on

5 of 5 stars

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This is a book I highly recommend for people of all ages because of how it deals with so many issues we are seeing now.

This story is extremely impactful and deals with several different issues in a realistic way that shows the struggles that T'Shawn and so many other kids like him face. We see the loss of a parent, a brother who gets sent to jail, a family who had dealt with homelessness, and is now a single-parent household. T'Shawn while being a child still is helping out around the house, taking care of his little sister, and focused on getting good grades. While this is normal for a lot of children today, it's one that we don't get to see a lot of mentioned in books like this. T'Shawn never really complains about any of this except wishing that he could do diving after school because he thinks it's cool and of course a girl he likes is into it as well.

“Let a kid from one of those neighborhoods make a mistake, and they get sympathy and a second chance. Kids down here just get condemned.”

One thing that continually stood out to me throughout this book was how T'Shawn and his friends differed on things, and for a while, he went along with them but once he really started to think about things he realized how different things were and stood up for what he throughout was right in the end. That's a hard thing to do no matter your age and to see a child be able to do that even though he knew it might cost him his friends was amazing to see. While what T'Shawns brother did was wrong and he knows that as does his brother, but he was never given a chance to show that he had changed, or that he even could change. Once T'Shawn realizes this as well as having actually talked to his brother about things finally he sees all that he had been doing and how he was sorry for what he'd done and wanted to change and do better and help their mom out.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 19 July, 2020: Finished reading
  • 19 July, 2020: Reviewed