Miles Morales by Jason Reynolds

 Miles has his mother's last name, because his father had at one time been a notorious gangster. His dad has gone straight, and worked hard in able to put Miles in a top private school. As a mixed racial kid it is hard for him to fit in at his school, and 2018having to attend history class with a seriously racist teacher makes it even harder. He knows that his teacher will expel him with the least provocation, so he tries hard to be the perfect student his parents want and need him to be.  It is hard when he has a secret that he has to hide from everyone but his best friend and his dad, that he was bitten by a radioactive spider when he was 13 years old, and now he has spider super powers! His spider sense keeps telling him there is something wrong in his history class.  Dare he investigate his terrible teacher and risk being expelled despite all his parents' sacrifices for him?

I chose this because it was written by Jason Reynolds and I would probably read about anything written by him. That being said, I don't know if Mr Reynolds was cut out to write superhero lit. This book is mostly about Miles' struggles in a white-dominated institution and his internal conflict about whether to stand up to unfair treatment and risk losing his place at the school. That part of the story was really well written.  As always, Reynolds creates sympathetic characters that behave in authentic ways and puts them in realistic social conflict situations. The last couple of chapters, however, when Miles actually uses his superpowers, was pretty silly and didn't make much sense. I wonder if Reynolds came up with that part of the plot, or whether is was adapted from a historic DC comic book plot.  Either way, it wasn't Mr. Reynold's best work. I still enjoyed the part that was more like his other works enough that I don't regret reading the book. (2018, 272p)