Bifocal.

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

In Bifocal, award-winning authors Deborah Ellis and Eric Walters offer readers a lens on the racism found in a large urban high school. Jay and Haroon’s perspectives are provided in alternating chapters. Walters authors Jay’s portions, which feature the grade 11 student, a linebacker on Central High’s multiracial football team. Jay’s status as the team’s captain-in-waiting facilitates his inclusion in the seniors’ jock in-crowd led by Kevin, current captain and Biggest Man on Campus. Ellis pens the chapters of 16-year-old Haroon Badawi, a third-generation Canadian with family roots in Persia/Iran. The novel’s initiating event is a school lockdown wherein heavily armed police arrest 17-year-old Azeem, one of Haroon’s Reach for the Top teammates, as a suspected member of a terrorist cell connected to Al Qaeda. Responses to Azeem’s arrest divide the student body while exposing the bigotry festering behind a facade of racial harmony. Azeem’s incarceration also divides Haroon’s Muslim family. His university-educated parents believe justice will prevail, but Haroon’s twin sister, Zana, who had been blending into mainstream culture, begins to embrace the visible aspects of her faith, including wearing an abaya. While Kevin’s racist attitudes become increasingly apparent, his social standing isolates him from peer criticism. On Halloween, Kevin leads three carloads of football players, including Jay, on a “pranking” outing. Because Zana had publicly stood up to Kevin, he purposefully makes the group’s last stop the Badawis’ home where racist graffiti is scrawled on the building’s exterior. Realistically, neither Walters nor Ellis offers a happy-ever-after ending. Highly recommended.