When I Was the Greatest (26 page)
Read When I Was the Greatest Online
Authors: Jason Reynolds
Photograph © Kia Chenelle
JASON REYNOLDS IS CRAZY.
ABOUT STORIES.
After earning a BA in English from the University of Maryland, College Park, he moved to Brooklyn, New York. You can often find him walking the four blocks from the train to his apartment, talking to himself. Well, not really talking to himself but just repeating character names and plot lines he thought of on the train, over and over again, because he's afraid he'll forget it all before he gets home.
You can find his ramblings at
iamjasonreynolds.com
.
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
authors.simonandschuster.com/Jason-Reynolds
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ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Jason Reynolds
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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OOKS FOR
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The text for this book is set in Arno.
Jacket photograph by Michael Frost
Sculpture of knitted gun by Magda Sayeg
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reynolds, Jason.
When I was the greatest / Jason Reynolds. â First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Ali lives in Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for guns and drugs, but he and his sister, Jazz, and their neighbors, Needles and Noodles, stay out of trouble until they go to the wrong party, where one gets badly hurt and another leaves with a target on his back.
ISBN 978-1-4424-5947-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-5949-6 (eBook)
[1. Conduct of lifeâFiction. 2. Family lifeâNew York (State)âBrooklynâFiction. 3. Brothers and sistersâFiction. 4. NeighborhoodâFiction. 5. ViolenceâFiction. 6. African AmericansâFiction. 7. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)âFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R33593Jer 2014
[Fic]âdc23 2012045734
