By: Emma Li
7.5/10
Have you ever read the book A Good Kind of Trouble? It is about a girl named Shayla and her problems throughout the book. Shayla is an African American. She struggles with friendship, school problems, and a lot of other issues involving other factors and people. Shayla slowly breaks away from her friend group and later finds herself in trouble with her principal. There are a lot of things going on worldwide, which brings Shayla and her family into some kind of trouble. This book is extremely addicting and one cannot put the book down after one picks it up.
Have you ever been in class, and even though the teacher was teaching the whole class, it feels like they are only directing towards you? That is how Shayla feels when she is in class whenever Shayla’s teacher is teaching her students about freedom and rights. This makes Shayla feel like an outcast from everyone because of her skin color. “The poem is called Still I Rise, even though Ms. Jacob is staring at me like she read the poem just for me.” This quote from the book describes Shayla’s humiliation when she sits in front of her class. The author does this by making it seem like Shayla is always the outcast in front of the teacher’s eyes. This matters because the author is trying to tell the readers that people like Shayla should not be treated differently.
In this story, Shayla gets jealous of her friends Isabella and Julia after one of them had a glow up after getting braces off and fixing her eyebrows. Julia is unexpectedly popular and starts hanging out with other girls. Shayla is worried about Isabella “stealing” her crush and Julia leaving Shayla and Isabella. “Used to be that people would ask if it was hard having two best friends. Now I know that what’s really hard is feeling like you don’t have any friends at all.” This quote is exactly what Shayla writes in her journal. The author does this by making it feel like Shayla is all on her own trying to solve problems and figure out her difficulties since Isabella and Julia are her childhood best friends.This matters because Shayla then felt remorse and lonely.
Black Lives Matter, or BLM, is extremely important, especially during the circumstances right now. Since Shayla wants to step up and do something about this, she starts wearing a black armband to school in recognition of BLM. “You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.” This poem is written by Maya Angelou. This just shows how people would not give up even if you make fun or threaten them. The author does this by comparing this BLM problem with Shayla and how she wants to help out on this BLM action. This relates to my rating because it really inspired me to learn about BLM, which was probably the author’s goal.
I would 101% recommend the book “A Good Kind of Trouble.” It is very climactic and compulsive. It has a lot of middle school drama and is so approachable. At first sight of the book cover and blurb, you can already know that the book was going to be amazing. There are amazing quotes inside of the book and many things that question you. I would definitely give this book a 7-8 out of 10.