Teacher turned filmmaker Nick Brooks follows up his middle grade debut Nothing Ever Happens to Ethan Fairmont with a highly anticipated foray into YA, a thriller called Promise Boys. In the novel, troubled students JB, Ramon, and Trey, who attend a famed all-boys charter school for at-risk youth, become the prime suspects in their principal’s violent murder. Brooks spoke with PW about the influence of his life experience on Promise Boys, the source of the novel’s nonlinear story structure, and the importance of placing child welfare at the center of education.
Was it always your intention to make a career in children’s books?
Not necessarily. Going way back, my goal was to be a big rapper. When that didn’t really pan out, I started in picture books. I did this program called Teach for America. I taught in D.C., which is where I’m from, and I taught five-year-olds. I noticed in my first year teaching that none of the books had characters that looked like them. I started writing children’s books first, and then that took me into film, so I’m in TV and film also. I initially moved out to California from D.C. to pursue film, started doing that, and then in 2020 the pandemic hit and everything shut down. I was like, OK, let me get back in my book bag because that’s kind of where the genesis of being a storyteller on the page started. I also consider being a hip-hop artist being a storyteller. For me, it’s all one big thing. For me, it’s all storytelling.
How did your background in film and hip-hop influence the creation of Promise Boys?
Being in film really helped because it’s not a traditional structure. I’m quite used to stories that do not have a traditional beginning, middle, and end. Even in TV, I get a lot of practice breaking stories into different parts. We don’t shoot linearly all the time, we shoot scenes out of order, so it was a practice I was familiar with. As far as coming from rapping, the oral expression to the written word, I just have a cadence with the writing and especially the dialogue. People who read the book, especially teachers, talk about how the characters in the book sound like their students. That’s because I was one of those students. I really came up through D.C.P.S. [DC Public Schools]. I taught these boys in D.C. I used to teach, specifically, at-risk Black boys in D.C. I coached football there too. And of course hip-hop. Understanding that in the way I do—coming from it, being a child of it, participating in it—helps as well when it comes to the story, not necessarily the structure of it, but the people in it and how they feel.
Is Promise Boys influenced by actual people or events? In what way, if any, does the book reflect your own experience?
Various pieces of the story, the characters, and the school itself reflect my experiences. You think back to JB writing the rhymes on the bus about Teyana. That’s totally me, writing the rhymes. You think about Ramon, he was the hustler. That was me growing up, from just a youngun’, always trying to find things to sell. Up through high school and college, that was just me being an entrepreneur. For Tray, being raised by his uncle, that was reminiscent of my stepfather. I had a stepfather who was extremely hard on me. It was that piece, Trey putting on a hard exterior shell, covering up his pain with comedy—these are things I’ve seen in all kids. They mask their discomfort or pain, their sadness with silliness. When they get into classrooms and act a certain way, teachers who don’t understand or can’t empathize or give grace, they’re quick to judge. All three of them are parts of me and even the school itself was like the school I taught at.
The challenges faced by JB, Ramon, and Trey are reflective of those faced by boys of color in the real world, such as allusions to the school-to-prison pipeline. What did you hope to accomplish with this portrayal?
The type of school that I taught at really had a blue line that kids had to walk on, even at five years old, and they had to walk with their hands behind their back. It really does look like prison, with the hard linoleum floors and the metallic tabletops in the cafeteria. A lot of times in these types of schools, even in those when I was coming up, once the money starts to come in, things change. We really saw the change with No Child Left Behind and its benchmarks and incentives. When you start to incentivize school funding in that way, schools start to crack down on students in ways that are not advantageous to them.
I want young men of color in places like Washington, D.C. or Houston, or New York, or Louisiana, or out here where I live in Englewood, Calif., to see themselves, and I want them to feel inspired to tell their own stories. I also want to reach non-readers. That’s on the student-facing front. As far as adults, I want people to become more critical of the practice, of the pedagogy when it comes to educating us. I want us to become more critical and hold schools more accountable for how that happens.
Promise Boys seems to have a distinctive point of view on how power can corrupt seemingly well-meaning public servants. Why did you feel the need to tackle this subject?
I think particularly for people who work in education, when you have power but you’re still at the whim of whiteness, it’s a tough line to walk because a few things can happen. You can be down and ride for the people, but you give yourself a ceiling; you’re limited. Or you can play the game in a way that not everybody in your community will agree with, but you advance further. And then there’s being like Principal Moore, where you become corrupted. I saw this often in my time with Teach for America. I observed that when people in education have power, they start to lose sight of the fact it’s all about the kids. Instead they make it about themselves and their career. My cautionary tale is not to lose sight of that, whether you’re a principal or a district leader or an executive director at a nonprofit. The kids should always come first.
Promise Boys by Nick Brooks. Henry Holt, $19.99 Jan. 31 ISBN 978-1-250-86697-4
