Jerry Craft

Biography

Jerry Craft was born and raised in New York City and attended an independent school on a scholarship — the experience that forms the emotional core of New Kid. He felt the same code-switching pressures Jordan feels, navigated the same class and race dynamics, and used art as the same coping and expression mechanism. New Kid won the Newbery Medal in 2020 — the first graphic novel ever to do so — as well as the Coretta Scott King Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Schneider Family Book Award. Craft has been explicit that he wrote the book he needed as a kid but didn't have.

Jerry Craft at a glance