Bang

Review from Booklist Reviews:

Following the death of his six-year-old son in a ghetto shooting, Mann's father made every effort to toughen up his surviving son: "If he's gonna be a man, he's gonna have to learn to chew nails and hold a gun in his hand." Approximating an African coming-of-age ritual, he abandons Mann and his friend Kee-Lee at a distant campsite. The experiment ends in tragedy when Kee-Lee falls victim to more senseless violence. Will Mann respond by spiralling into a street thug's nihilistic existence, or will he become someone who "takes trouble and makes something good out of it"? Flake's plot is relentlessly and purposefully grim as well as somewhat jumbled, with disparate story strands that include Mann's developing talents as an artist and his efforts to heal sick, abandoned horses at a city stable. But the vivid, raw voices that earned Flake a Coretta Scott King Award for The Skin I'm In (1998) and two Coretta Scott King Honors are in abundant evidence-and the complicated relationship between Mann and his father represents a welcome investigation of African American manhood, a theme that cries out for broader YA treatment.