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
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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. — 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 life—Fiction. 2. Family life—New York (State)—Brooklyn—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Neighborhood—Fiction. 5. Violence—Fiction. 6. African Americans—Fiction. 7. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R33593Jer 2014
[Fic]—dc23 2012045734