NEW YORK, N.Y. – One of the former “Central Park Five” is teaming with an acclaimed children's author on a young adult novel with a personal theme — being wrongfully sentenced to prison.
Yusef Salaam and author Ibi Zoboi are working together on “Punching the Air,” according to Bray + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Children's Books.
The book comes out Sept. 1. Salaam was among five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were coerced into confessing to a rape they didn’t commit in 1989.
They were exonerated in 2002, but not before all had served prison time. They later received a multimillion-dollar settlement from New York City.