Dear Martin, published in 2017, is a novel about 17-year-old Justyce, who, after being racially profiled by a police officer, grapples with questions of police brutality and systemic racism. As he finishes his senior year, Justyce reflects on his experiences at his predominantly white prep school, Brasleton Preparatory Academy, as well as the instances of police brutality that he sees on the news. Throughout all of this, Justyce writes letters to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. where he reflects on these realities. Later in the novel, Justyce's best friend, Manny Rivers, is shot and killed by a police officer. Justyce must deal with his grief over the loss of his best friend.
As soon as it was published, Dear Martin received a wave of overwhelming critical acclaim. It debuted at #4 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It also received starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. Several notable adult authors also praised Dear Martin. John Green called it "a powerful, wrenching, and compulsively readable story that lays bare the history, and the present, of racism in America." Jodi Picoult called the novel "painfully timely and deeply moving." Angie Thomas, the author of The Hate U Give, praised Dear Martin as "absolutely incredible, honest, gut-wrenching. A must read!" The Atlantic noted that Dear Martin "force[s] readers to grapple with the evolution of the struggle for civil rights, and . . . to question whether there ever was—or is—a single 'right' way to attain equality at all." Kirkus Reviews also praised Dear Martin as it "stands apart in a literature that too often finds it hard to look hard truths in the face." Deborah Stevenson also celebrated Dear Martin in a review published by the Johns Hopkins University Press: "The story touches on some heart-breaking real-life truths and Justyce's and Manny's separate and shared negotiations of privilege and blackness. . . are thoughtfully explored."
Dear Martin has also been nominated for several awards. It was a selection for the 2018 Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year award, the 2018 Oklahoma Sequoyah Children's Book Master List, the 2018 Oklahoma Sequoyah Young Adult's Book Master List, and 2018 Tayshas List. It was a finalist for the 2018 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award for Young Adult Fiction and the 2018 William C. Morris YA Debut Award.
In 2019, the Columbia County School District in Georgia banned Dear Martin from schools and bookstores. The superintendant of the Columbia County School District stated that the reason Dear Martin was banned is that it contained expletives. However, based on the fact that several other books with expletives were allowed, several residents of Columbia County suspect that the book was banned because it dealt with race. Nic Stone responded in an interview with The Root that her guess for why the book was banned was because of the book's topic: "My assumption is that the displeasure is with the overall topic of the book. . . I think it's just a discomfort about racism." Stone concludes the interview with a call-to-action: “We just gotta get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Nothing changes if there is no discomfort. Especially members of the majority. White people gotta get okay with not being comfortable all the time. Black people, we’ve been uncomfortable our whole life. Kids need to know that’s an okay feeling and that talking about things makes the world better.”
Dear Martin has been translated into six languages and has been published in Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, The Netherlands, UK, Turkey, and Romania.
In September 2020, Stone published a sequel to Dear Martin, entitled Dear Justyce. The sequel is written from Quan Banks's point-of-view, as he awaits trial for the murder of Officer Castillo. Instead of writing letters to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he writes letters to Justyce. It received a starred review from Kirkus, which praised the novel as a "powerful, raw, must-read."
