Rating: 4 stars
Dear Martin is a young adult novel that looks at racial profiling from the lens of a high school senior named Justyce, who writes a journal to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. amidst his and his friend Manny's struggles with growing up Black in America, doing nothing wrong, and being punished for it - even to the point of dying.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and found that it would be a great addition to an upper middle school classroom (with content warnings for parents) as well as for a high school classroom in particular. I read the book in just under two hours and at around 200 pages it is an approachable title for a classroom read. It is also written in a mixed format style, with some prose, letters, and script, and the majority of the prose being dialogue.
Dear Martin approaches numerous topics affecting the Black community today, including racial profiling, police brutality, interracial dating, displays of white supremacy, and negative business and media responses to protesting and social movements. I recommend this book to any student or person who is interested in reading about these topics on a more macro level. This book is excellent for someone who may not know too much about these topics and will be able to see how they play out in this fictional, yet-all-too real story. Dear Martin is likely to be a place that many Google searches originate from about each of these topics. I would also recommend this book particularly for students who may not have had experience with these issues or aware of them in their communities. I think the story could have contained more length as it tries to tackle numerous complex topics in a short page range, without diving incredibly deep into each. Some scenes went by quickly with only dialogue and not much descriptive prose, leading me to feel a lack of depth.This story is intense but also approachable in its reading level and length so as to be a good starting point for an individual looking to learn more about social issues. Overall, I enjoyed reading Dear Martin and look forward to the sequel, Dear Justyce.