Tight

Born and raised in the crime-ridden projects of Brooklyn’s Red Hook district, Torrey Maldonaldo admits to hating books as a child because, in his words, “they were boring or seemed to hate or dismiss people from where I’m from” (“Torrey Maldonado.” House of SpeakEasy). Like Tight’s protagonist Bryan, Maldonado found his “fortress of solitude” in superhero comics, whose bold, fast-moving sagas introduced him to the primal power of storytelling at an early age. Additionally, comics were a safer choice in his neighborhood than books, for a youth who read too many books inevitably bore the stigma of being “soft” and could get bullied as a result (“Torrey Maldonado.” The Latino Author). Maldonado recalls that comic books excited him in the same way that sports and films did, and he especially related to the darker-skinned superheroes and antiheroes, such as Black Adam. The power of comic books, with their dynamic action and diverse characters, led him to embrace literacy, art, and the mechanics of storytelling—and eventually write stories and books himself.

An acclaimed educator who has taught for 25 years in New York City public schools, Maldonado has published four novels for young readers (Secret Saturdays, Tight, What Lane?, and Hands), each less than 200 pages. He has seen firsthand, in his own childhood and as a teacher, how thick “tomes” (or, as he terms them, “tombs”) can dissuade young readers from even attempting to read—especially in poorer neighborhoods, where “tomorrow isn’t promised” and time may seem too short to tackle thick books (Bird, Betsy. “Multidimensional Masculinity and Resuscitating ‘Literary Life’ in Kids.” School Library Journal, 1 Aug. 2023). Assigning children long novels, he believes, is a “failed model” that may do more harm than good. Maldonado’s taut, highly-compressed stories match the fast-paced world of many of his readers, without sacrificing the nuance and character development of first-rate fiction. (For instance, Tight’s 177 pages are broken into chapters that average less than five pages each.) His novels have won a number of awards and have been widely credited with helping elementary and middle school students to become enthusiastic about reading. In this way, he strives to write books that excite today’s youths just as powerfully as comic books excited him.

Unlike some comic books, however, Maldonado’s novels are more than just cartoonish detours into escapism and power-fantasy. His books’ forays into urban realism and social commentary allow him to delve into serious issues that his young readers, especially the less privileged ones, face every day, including poverty, peer pressure, racism, bullying, and domestic violence. His stories create recognizable worlds for his young readers, including such grace notes as their cultural interests and slang, which he has tried to render as faithfully as possible. Above all, his characters show by example that they can create positive change in their lives and in their communities. The hero of his novel Hands, for instance, discovers that he has more options than a life of grinding poverty and violence; like Bryan in Tight, he learns to take the long view, defying the fatalism of the streets and its dead-end macho culture. The future may not be promised, but in Maldonado’s books, it is always there for those who think ahead and work hard for it. As Maldonado explains, “I want my readers to see we have agency, can choose, act, and flip hard times into more manageable times” (Bird).