My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

Unpack the title of the story. How is Ebony-Grace an “ice cream sandwich”? How does she turn the diss into a positive? Why does or doesn’t she embrace the term?

Read one of Zoboi’s other books—whether it’s Star Child, American Street, or another title—and compare it to Ebony-Grace’s story. What do the characters and settings have in common? How do the themes match up?

Read another story by another author that highlights girls of color—like Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014)—and compare that book to Ebony-Grace’s story. In the “acknowledgments” to My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, Zoboi shouts out Rita Williams-Garcia’s novel One Crazy Summer (2010), where a trio of sisters have to spend a summer with a distant parent and an unfamiliar place.