Ghost

Same fusion of athletics and emotional complexity in middle-grade fiction — Alexander uses verse where Reynolds uses compressed prose, both centering Black boyhood

First-person voice of a smart, marginalized boy navigating class, violence, and belonging — written half a century earlier but structurally a direct ancestor

Reynolds's verse novel about gun violence — if Ghost is about surviving a shooting, Long Way Down is about the cycle that produces them

The novel Reynolds has cited as his awakening — another story of a Black boy trapped in a system that has already decided who he is

Contemporary middle-grade fiction centering a Black boy navigating institutional spaces not designed for him — graphic novel form where Ghost uses prose

Another middle-grade novel about a kid with an absent father and extraordinary abilities who must learn that being different is not the same as being broken