Fourteen-year-old Jalen Kobayashi has a way with words.
Last spring, while still a student at Rogers Elementary, he made it to the independent finals of the Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry slam, spitting rhymes about institutionalized racism, materialism and education.
Now an incoming freshman at Whitney Young High School, the eloquent teen continues to hone his craft as a poet and rapper, as evidenced by the books he keeps in his Budlong Woods bedroom — titles such as “How to Rap” and “The BreakBeat Poets.”
“I write and read a lot, especially when I’m on punishment!” Kobayashi says with a slight grin.
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Other favorites of his include “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,” “The Skin I’m In,” “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian” and “Twisted” — many of which he’s read more than once.
“I don’t want to give the connotation that reading a book is a punishment,” he adds. “For me, it has always come naturally — something I should do, not something I had to do.”