In his YA novel Long Way Down, Jason Reynolds uses the painful past to reveal the difficulty between doing what you are taught is right and doing what is moral.
After 15-year-old Will's older brother, Shawn, is killed, Will has to decide whether he will kill the man he believes murdered Shawn. He grabs his brother's gun and enters the apartment building's elevator, where, on his minutes-long trip from the eighth floor to the first, he is visited by the ghosts of gun violence past.
Danica Novgorodoff's ink-and-watercolor illustrations are a beautiful addition to Reynolds's lyrical text. Using a dark palette and plenty of empty space, Novgorodoff employs the graphic novel format to build suspense and create intense emotion through sweeping double-page spreads, elaborate single-page illustrations, confining panels and un-bordered panels that blend into each other. A gorgeously illustrated reinterpretation of the novel. --Kharissa Kenner, children's librarian, Bank Street School for Children