Wash, meanwhile, is the son of educated, middle-class African-American parents who expect him to focus on his studies and attend one of the country's prestigious black colleges. Orphaned Mexican-American Naomi wouldn't normally be allowed to attend the all-white high school, but she moves to town under the guardianship of her younger twin siblings' formerly estranged white father Henry, who moved all three kids from their grandparents' poor Mexican neighborhood in San Antonio. Set in the months leading up to the 1937 New London school explosion in East Texas, OUT OF DARKNESS follows two fictional teens: Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller. Also, better to learn in a book than on the playground or Internet. Kids are pretty smart and can tell the difference. I think it's delineates sex between loving individuals versus the loveless kind of sex that occurs in the dark. But it's not pornographic or even alluring or titillating in the slightest when the subject of sex briefly makes appearance, The sex stuff is usually brief, only a paragraph or two and doesn't make it sexy but matter of fact. That is, it doesn't shy away from including the topics of sex and sex abuse. The book also covers a topic most parents are too comfortable with. But I think it's important not to forget the draconian, populist racism people of color had to deal with at the time. So, it offers an important historical perspective about race I think most people may not be comfortable thinking or talking about. It takes place in a camp where a young black boy falls in love with a Hispanic girl, and it being in the 1930s, people handle it about as well as you'd expect. It covers the topic of race in the South (Texas) during the oil boom of the 1930s. I think it's probably a good lesson for kids to know you probably shouldn't make snap judgements about people, whether for good or for ill, until you get to know them. Some of the characters seem like good people but as you go along, you learn more about who they are and what they believe. It didn't tell you so much as showed you about them.

Overall the book took its time to introduce the characters. So I bought a copy and started to read it. I researched it and saw the book had many accolades and was on many critics top ten list. I heard about this book when some people showed up at a school board meeting demanding it be removed from all the libraries in each of the schools in the district.

Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez