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This morning, before the gears on the work-a-day-world began to turn in earnest, I read "Gabriel: A Poem," Edward Hirsch's book-length elegy for his departed son.

It is hallowed and hollowing, a work of pristine mourning. Memories seamed and broken. Threads that fall away until we see the soul of the boy himself— adopted, challenged by tics and relentless recklessness, the bright splash in a room. He is a child no one can keep safe from himself. A child who goes out during Storm Irene to a party he sees advertised on Craigslist. A child who does not return and cannot be found for four terrible days.

And then he must be buried.

It ransacks the soul, reading a book like this. We peel away as the lines peel away; no periods at the end of any line, no finished sentences. We look and we cannot stop looking until Gabriel, and his searching father, are a part of us.

It is a poem. It is also memoir. Like Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming it suggests, again, another form for the hardest and most important stories lived. The most important things lost and lifted to the page.

Words:

In his country
There were scenes
Of spectacular carnage

Hurricanes welcomed him
He adored typhoons and tornadoes
Furies unleashed

Houses lifted up
And carried to the sea
Uncontained uncontainable

Unbolt the doors
Fling open the gates
Here he comes

Chaotic wind of the gods
He was trouble
But he was our trouble

With thanks to Nathaniel Popkin, whose craft essay in Cleaver Magazine last week reminded me that I had meant to buy and read this.

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We Need Diverse Books will host a short story contest for unpublished diverse writers. Entries (5,000 words or less) will be accepted starting on April 27th; the deadline has been set for May 8th.

The winning piece will be included in the organization’s anthology (working title Stories For All Of Us). This book is dedicated to the memory of the late Walter Dean Myers and his quote, “Once I began to read, I began to exist.”

Phoebe Yeh, the publisher of Crown Books for Young Readers at Random House, has acquired this project. Some of the authors who plan to contribute pieces include Sherman Alexie, Grace Lin, and Jacqueline Woodson. Click here to learn more details about this contest.

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This morning I have been raised up by Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson's masterpiece. I have sat with her poems and her life on my lap, seeing with greatest clarity. A story of growing up in the south and in the north, of reading slow and remembering deep, of telling stories that might have been as if they happened yesterday. Life is apportioned but it must be lived whole. In fractions we find our trembling unities. In love, our idea of home.

This is Woodson's story. But it's also the way she tells the story, the deep, clean beauty in the lines, the wisdom in the narrative idea, the authenticity of the recurring themes, not a single (bless her) gimmick. It's how she speaks for all of us, how she makes us want (at once) to pass her story on. It's how she  makes me remember, when I read her book, sitting in the back of a teacher's conference in Boston, only last year, with Nancy Paulsen, Woodson's editor, beside me (Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin). Woodson was on the stage. Paulsen was smiling.

"She's written such a beautiful book," Paulsen leaned over and whispered, and I said (all honestly), "I have no doubt."

Not one.

Have no doubt about this book. Read (if you haven't already) the whole, but start with this single page called "writing # 1." It, like the entirety of Brown Girl Dreaming, calls to all of us:

writing #1

It's easier to make up stories
than it is to write them down. When I speak,
the words come pouring out of me. The story
wakes up and walks all over the room. Sits in a chair,
crosses one leg over the other, says,
Let me introduce myself. Then just starts going on and on.
But as I bend over my composition notebook,
only my name
comes quickly. Each letter, neatly printed
between the pale blue lines. Then white
space and air and me wondering, How do I
spell introduce? Trying again and again
until there is nothing but pink
bits of eraser and a hole now
where a story should be.

Perfection? I think so.

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Brown Girl Dreamingby Jacqueline Woodson. Nancy Paulsen Books, published by the Penguin Books. 2014. Reviewed from ARC.

The Plot: Woodson uses poetry to tell the story of her childhood, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. She was born in Ohio; moved to South Carolina; and later to New York City. It's a story of Woodson growing up, and learning more about the world around her, and learning how to process that world using words and stories.

The Good: First, yes, this book is wonderful. Perfect. Amazing. I was so, so happy to see it selected as the National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature. I mean, there is so much out there that already establishes this as terrific, what do I have to add to the conversation?

Brown Girl Dreaming starts with Woodson's birth in 1963:

I am born in Ohio but
the stories of South Carolina already run
like rivers
through my veins.

Brown Girl Dreaming is a look at what shapes one girl, born in Ohio in 1963, following her childhood until about fifth grade. And so on one level, the "obvious" level, it's a book aimed at those who are the child-Woodson's age.

It's also about a young African American girl in the 1960s and 1970s, living both in the South and the North, and her many worlds: the world of immediate family of mother and siblings, the bigger world of grandparents and aunts and uncles, the world of friends and school, and then civil rights and what that meant, or didn't mean. And all those things, while being told by a child, are things that readers of all ages are interested in.

For Brown Girl Dreaming, the age of the protagonist doesn't dictate the age of the reader; rather, the interests of the reader make this book open and of interest to readers of all ages.

So, people like myself -- born just three years after Woodson -- are potential readers. As are older readers who lived during that time. Just because, hey, I also remember watching The Big Blue Marble and singing along to the theme song, even if I did it from New Jersey.

The poetry may make it more accessible for some readers, but that doesn't mean it's easy or simple. Teen readers do like to read about teens -- but it's not the only thing they like to read about. Despite Woodson's age during the time of Brown Girl Dreaming, the things she lives through, her experiences, her world is bigger than her age. A parent's divorce; a move; a new sibling; a sick brother; learning about the world through books; and civil rights; all of this, all of what is in Brown Girl Dreaming, are of interest to all ages. I'd even argue that older readers -- older than ten, anyway -- will get more out of Brown Girl Dreaming because they will understand the references and the emotions in a way that younger readers cannot.

And, finally, selfishly, I don't want this to be it. I want the books that take Woodson further along her journey: Brown Teen Dreaming, Brown Woman Dreaming -- just to suggest a couple of possible titles.

Of course, this is a Favorite Book Read in 2014.



Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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ReedPOP and We Need Diverse Books have established a partnership. The collaborators plan to organize two panels that will take place during BookCon 2015.

The first panel, scheduled for May 30th, will focus on the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre with participation from Kameron Hurley, Ken Liu, Nnedi Okorafor, Daniel Jose Older, and Joe Monti. The second panel, scheduled for May 31st, will feature appearances from Jacqueline Woodson, Sherman Alexie, Libba Bray, David Levithan, and Meg Medina.

Here’s more from the press release: “We Need Diverse Books was part of last year’s inaugural BookCon playing host to a standing room only panel full of thought-provoking conversation and enthusiastic readers. The overwhelming response from fans and the rapid ascent of We Need Diverse Books, which grew from a social media awareness campaign into a global movement, set the stage for the partnership to expand at this year’s show.”

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World-renowed author James Patterson has launched the #SaveOurBooks campaign. The video embedded above features a controversial scene of book burning.

Patterson aims to elicit a pledge of support from President Barack Obama; he hopes to have Obama declare his concern about the state of reading within the country, appear in public carrying a book, and visit either a library or a bookstore. To help Patterson with this project, bibliophiles can sign a petition, write to a U.S. senator, and share information on social media.

For the last two years, the President has visited the Politics & Prose independent bookstore on Small Business Saturday. Last week, he and his two daughters purchased 17 books including Jacqueline Woodson’s National Book Award-winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming.

In the past, Patterson has expressed his own concern about how well reading and books are valued by the American people. He has donated $2 million to independent bookstores throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. What do you think?

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• There was a time, oh children of mine, when the ALA Media Awards would be announced and the morning after the announcement the winners of the Caldecott and Newbery Awards would be whisked away to New York City to speak on NBC.  Then Snooki came and ruined everything (this is the abbreviated version, but it’s not too far off).  So we’re none too pleased with NBC these days.  Al Roker’s Book Club aside (and it looks like it hasn’t updated since Halloween) there’s not a lot going on at that channel.  But then they go and post the Latinas for Latino Lit: “Remarkable” Children’s Books of 2014 piece (selected by Viviana Hurtado and Monica Olivera) and much is forgiven.  Just one question about the list, though . . . no Viva Frida?

• What is the state of children’s nonfiction in the UK today?  For our answer we turn to my favorite British blog Playing By the Book which reveals revelation after revelation in the piece Do We Care About Children’s Non-Fiction?  Apparently informational books don’t get reviewed all that often in the U.K.  Do the British value nonfiction then?  Definitely fascinating reading.

• “I mean, seriously, can you think of one popular show/movie that actually tries to portray Muslims accurately instead of as a confining stereotype?”  The excellent Summer writes on her blog Miss Fictional’s World of YA the piece I Am Not Oppressed.  In particular she’s not particularly pleased with how Muslim women are depicted on the bulk of our book jackets (to say nothing of the content inside).

• Hm.  So Entertainment Weekly just released a list of 50 Books Every Kid Should Read.  Interesting, yes?  And the choices are fascinating.  They made an effort to do the classics and then work in some contemporary titles.  What they chose is telling.  Little Willow presents the list and leads the discussion as well.

• Um . . .

Okaaaaay. So that’s what Evangeline Lilly wore to her children’s book signing at Barnes & Noble.  Clearly this is the outfit children’s authors should all be wearing now.  Those of you hankering to wear your picnic blanket as a skirt now finally have an excuse to do so.  Thanks to Jules for the link.

• I think roughly 500 people sent me the Richard Scarry’s Busy Town in the 21st Century link, to which I say to each and every last one of you – THANK YOU!!  Good old Tom the Dancing Bug.

• Oh!  How useful!  PW recently published a rather lovely assessment of Children’s and YA Writing M.F.A. Programs around the country.  Apparently they already covered Simmons in a previous post.

• And now, the best news of the week.  My love for the author Frances Hardinge knows no bounds.  Honestly, I do believe that The Lost Conspiracy may be my favorite children’s book published in the last 10 years.  It’s a serious contender in any case.  So you can imagine how distraught I was when it became clear that Harper Collins would no longer be publishing her books in the U.S.  I watched miserably as the U.K. published A Face Like Glass and Cuckoo Song (read the Book Smugglers review of the latter) overseas.  Heck, I actually shelled out money and bought the darn books myself (and you know how I feel about spending money).  Then, yesterday, a miracle.  I was paging through the Spring 2015 Abrams catalog and there she was.  Frances.  And Cuckoo Song, it said, would be published in May with what may well be the creepiest cover . . . um, ever?  Yeah.  Ever.  It’s not even online yet, so just stay tuned because when it is you know I’ll be blogging it.  So excited. (pssst! Abrams! Let me do the cover reveal!)

• If you missed the whole Barbie, Computer Programmer children’s book debacle, now’s your time to catch up.  This was the inciting incident.  This was the follow-up.

• The nice thing about working for NYPL is that they give me an awful lot of leeway when it comes to programming.  I want to do a monthly series of Children’s Literary Salons on a host of different topics?  Go to it!  Any topic I like.  The best ones, however, are often suggested by other people.  For example, when editors Cheryl Klein and Stacy Whitman suggested we have a panel on Native American YA literature where authors Eric Gansworth and Joseph Bruchac could talk about the cross-cultural pleasures and challenges of working with their editors, I was all for it.  Sadly, most of my Lit Salons are not recorded . . . but this one was!  Cheryl, you see, is married to James Monohan and together they run the blog The Narrative Breakdown.  My Salon?  It became one of the episodes and you can listen to it here.  As for those of you interested in attending a Salon (they’re free after all) there’s one this coming Saturday and you can see the full roster of them here.

• This thing.  More libraries should do this thing. Yes.

• A few things.  Jacqueline Woodson wrote a New York Times piece about the incident at the National Book Awards.  There is that.  Now I would also recommend that you read two additional pieces as well.  I Am Racist and I Am Sexist and Probably Some Other -Ists, Too.  The other is just called Racist.

• Speaking of Ms. Woodson, did you see the list of books President Obama purchased at Politics and Prose last Saturday?  If we just pull out the children’s book fare it included:

1. “Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business” by Barbara Park
2. “A Barnyard Collection: Click, Clack, Moo and More” by Doreen Cronin
3. “I Spy Sticker Book and Picture Riddles” by Jean Marzollo
4. “Nuts to You” by Lynn Rae Perkins
5. “Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus” by Barbara Park
6. “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson
7. “Redwall” by Brian Jacques
8. “Mossflower” by Brian Jacques
9. “Mattimeo” by Brian Jacques
10. “Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms” by Katherine Rundell

• Daily Image:

I consider this my early Christmas present.  Years ago when I did the Top 100 Children’s Novels poll, I did a post on All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor that included every book cover I could find of the title.  All but one.  The book jacket I grew up with appeared to be lost to the sands of time.  And now, all thanks to Sadie Salome, it’s been returned to me.  Behold the only work of historical fiction I read independently and for fun as a kid from cover to cover:

Still the best, so far as I’m concerned.  Thanks, Sadie.

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Author Jacqueline Woodson won the 2014 Young People’s Literature Award at the National Book Awards last month.

After being presented with the award at the ceremony in New York, the event’s host, author Daniel Handler, revealed that Jackie is allergic to watermelon and made a joke at her expense. “Just let that sink in your mind,” he said, telling her that she should put a character like that into her next book.

Woodson has responded to the racist joke in a New York Times op-ed saying that “it was the last place in the world I thought I’d hear the watermelon joke.” Here is an excerpt from her response:  (more…)

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President Obama made his annual trip to the Washington DC based indie book store Politics and Prose over the weekend to celebrate Small Business Saturday.

On the outing with his daughters, the president purchased 17 books, according to reports. National Book Award winners Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and Age of Ambition:Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos, as well as NBA Finalist All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr were on his shopping list.

The New York Times has more about the shopping trip:

Mr. Obama spotted a new book behind the register, “The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House,” by Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The president noted that he looked “lonely” on the cover, and Malia asked, “How is he already writing a book?”

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 Brown Girl Dreaming
by Jacqueline Woodson
Intermediate, Middle School    Paulsen/Penguin
328 pp.    8/14    978-0-399-25251-8    $16.99    g

Here is a memoir-in-verse so immediate that readers will feel they are experiencing the author’s childhood right along with her. It starts out somewhat slowly, with Woodson relying on others’ memories to relate her (1963) birth and infancy in Ohio, but that just serves to underscore the vividness of the material once she begins to share her own memories; once her family arrives in Greenville, South Carolina, where they live with her maternal grandparents. Woodson describes a South where the whites-only signs may have been removed but where her grandmother still can’t get waited on in Woolworth’s, where young people are sitting at lunch counters and standing up for civil rights; and Woodson expertly weaves that history into her own. However, we see young Jackie grow up not just in historical context but also—and equally—in the context of extended family, community (Greenville and, later, Brooklyn), and religion (she was raised Jehovah’s Witness). Most notably of all, perhaps, we trace her development as a nascent writer, from her early, overarching love of stories through her struggles to learn to read through the thrill of her first blank composition book to her realization that “words are [her] brilliance.” The poetry here sings: specific, lyrical, and full of imagery: “So the first time my mother goes to New York City / we don’t know to be sad, the weight / of our grandparents’ love like a blanket / with us beneath it, / safe and warm.” An extraordinary—indeed brilliant—portrait of a writer as a young girl. martha v. parravano

From the September/October 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. Brown Girl Dreaming is the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

The post Review of Brown Girl Dreaming appeared first on The Horn Book.

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Phil Klay has won the Fiction award for his book Redeployment from The Penguin Press/Penguin Group (USA).

Evan Osnos has won the Nonfiction award for Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Louise Gluck won the Poetry award for Faithful and Virtuous Night from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

The Young People’s Literature award went to Jacqueline Woodson for Brown Girl Dreaming from Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan.

The National Book Award winners for 2014 were revealed tonight. If you want to read all the finalists, we’ve collected free samples of the finalists in all the categories below. Who was your favorite this year?

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The We Need Diverse Books team have launched a crowdfunding venture on Indiegogo.

This group hope to raise $100,000.00 that will be used towards several different projects. Future plans include bringing diverse books and authors into disadvantaged schools, initiating the Walter Dean Myers Award & Grant program, and launching the inaugural Kidlit Diversity Festival in Washington, D.C.

We’ve embedded a video about the campaign above; it features appearances from Matt de la Peña, John Green, Marie Lu, Cindy Pon, Grace Lin, Lamar Giles, Tim Federle, Jacqueline Woodson, and Arthur Levine. Follow this link to read a transcript. What do you think?

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Here at First Book, we love books (surprise, surprise) and love sharing great books with friends like you.

Starting today, we’ll share a new list of the books each month that our book enthusiasts on staff can’t stop raving about!  You’ll find books full of rich illustrations, diverse characters and compelling tales that span multiple age ranges.

And if you serve kids in need, you can access these books through the First Book Marketplace by signing up.

PreK-K (Ages 2-5):

My Big Barefoot Book of Wonderful Words  written and illustrated by Sophie Fatus

The Palabra family has a busy day ahead of them, and this jam-packed picture book (available as a First Book special edition!) allows readers to follow along while exploring over 700 words, each serving as a label for a corresponding image. There is an infusion of useful vocabulary on each page, but the magic of this book is in the charming illustrations, which transform it into an interactive adventure through a multicultural world.

 

Grades 1-2 (Ages 6-8):

Viva Frida written and illustrated by Yuyi Morales

You have never read a book like Viva Frida. This sparsely written bilingual picture book employs a unique art style – a mix of painting and photographs of hand-made puppets – to celebrate the life and emotional depth of Frida Kahlo. While not a traditional biography, the author’s profound tribute to the famous Mexican artist will leave readers hungry to learn more.

 

 

Grades 3-4 (Ages 8-10):

Firebird written by Misty Copeland and illustrated by Christopher Myers

Misty Copeland’s life is a story of its own, from “nonexistence as a young girl,” to the second African-American soloist in the history of the American Ballet Theater. Copeland wrote Firebird in order to empower young girls to follow her example and achieve impossible dreams. Christopher Myers’s dramatic use of color through paint and collage captures Copeland’s bold personality and her unwavering determination in the face of discouragement from critics.

 

Grades 5-6 (Ages 10-12):

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson was born into the world of the Civil Right movement, raised in the Deep South and then the packed city blocks of New York. She lived her life for the written word, from the first “J” she ever wrote to the stories that became the air she breathes. Brown Girl Dreaming is the story of that life, told in the same verse style as many of her novels. By choosing to share her childhood memories through poetry, Woodson creates a personal story that allows readers to explore her depth, warmth, and uniquely perceptive eye for the beautiful world around her.

 

Grades 7+ (Ages 13+):

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Combining the emotional impact of traditional poetry with the power of modern hip hop, The Crossover is an unputdownable novel sure to engage even the most reluctant of readers. Kwame Alexander gives teens a window into the mind of Josh “Filthy McNasty” Bell: a 13-year-old basketball superstar navigating the social realities of school, the crumbling foundation of his family, and his passion for the game that ties it all together. Few books are able to say so much with so few words.

The post Five First Book Favorites appeared first on First Book Blog.

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Over the weekend, dozens of authors and illustrators appeared at the Library of Congress’ 14th annual National Book Festival. Children’s books creator Bob Staake designed this year’s official poster. We’ve collected three writing tips that some of the writers shared during their panels.

Joey Pigza book series author Jack Gantos suggests that one “stay as organized as possible.” He thinks that one should keep several notebooks. This helps to categorize different thoughts because one idea might be a good fit for the beginning a story and another could work for the middle.

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title: Brown Girl Dreaming

author: Jacqueline Woodson

Date: Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin; August 2014

Main Character: Jacqueline Woodson

MIddle Grade Fiction

There are rules to children’s books you know, and Jacqueline Woodson just broke one.

Brown Girl Dreaming is the author’s poetic telling of her childhood and retrospective visits to childhood are supposed to be adult books. Somewhere along when Jackie learned to embrace words and the power they contain, she became entitled to a Poetic License that let this book be produced as a children’s book. Thank goodness!

For me, a Black woman of the same generation who grew up in Ohio with a mother from Mississippi, I quite often found myself pausing and connecting to the story while I daydreamed about my own life. But, this book wasn’t written for me. Will teens relate? Will they find themselves in the spaces Woodson creates when she talks about teeth, not being as smart as, about grandpa’s love and forever friends? I think that they will not only find themselves in these nuances, but they’ll also see how they fit into the larger stories of their family, community and history itself.

In creating a fictional autobiography, Woodson leaves huge spaces that all readers can dive into and find their own meaning. Woodson looks back as adult, but tells the story through the eyes of a child. Her family is her haven whether they’re in New York or South Carolina and even when it looks like things might be going wrong, Jacqueline’s family is perfect in the young girl’s eyes. This girl has a dream to fulfill and we’re going to find out where she gets her strength!

Young Jacqueline is disenchanted with the inaccuracies of memory and the confusion between storytelling and lying.

Keep making up stories, my uncle says.

You’re lying my mother says.

 

Maybe the truth is somewhere between

all that I’m told

and memory.

So, Jacqueline decides to give us her own truths in this story of self empowerment.

I’m so glad Woodson broke the rule!

I reviewed an ARC and am looking forward to adding a final copy to my collection as it will also contain photos.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline Woodson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from college with a B.A. in English. She now writes full-time and has recently received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults. Her other awards include a Newbery Honor, two Coretta Scott King awards, two National Book Award finalists, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. source

Filed under: Book Reviews Tagged: african american, Jacqueline Woodson, review

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One of my favorite writers and illustrators, Michelle Edwards, was kind enough to invite me to join the My Writing Process Blog Tour. Michelle has written and illustrated numerous books for children, including the National Jewish Book Award winner, Chicken Man. If you enjoy knitting, you might like to pick up her book on knitting for adults, A Knitter's Home Companion, an illustrated collection

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I am so happy to be able to welcome the funnest librarian on the planet, Pam Margolis from the Unconventional Librarian and her post; Kid Writing and Biographies: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson to the Discover Your World Summer Reading Extravaganza!

I believe that growing up in the South during the civil rights era is akin to growing up in different country. We all know that people of color were not treated well in the South. It’s difficult to imagine that there was a time when literature for children did not include people of color. Of any color.

 

Jacqueline Woodson, a powerful voice for multicultural children and teens, was born in Ohio in the 60s. Her childhood was spent in South Carolina and Ohio before finally settling in New York City. Imagine watching the differences in the interactions between Whites and Blacks from a child’s perspective. Woodson’s sensitivity to a child’s thoughts is uncanny. There are many ways to incorporate family projects into the reading of this book.

 

What I love about Brown Girl Dreaming is that not only is it an autobiography (written in free verse) but it’s also a tale of the civil rights movement told through the voice of a child. Even the youngest child will understand the meaning of the behaviors described in the book. For example:

 

In the stores downtown

we’re always followed around

just because we’re brown.

 

Any point in the book is a great opportunity to discuss race, our differences, and similarities. There are so many teachable moments in this book. In addition to discussing civil rights, the book would also make a great study of Black literature, for example, young Jackie discovers Langston Hughes:

 

I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There’s nothing more to say.

The poem ends.

Soft as it began—

I loved my friend.

–Langston Hughes

 

I remember when I first discovered Langston Hughes and this sad poem. I was instantly moved. Fortunately, young Jackie is discovering her writing voice and she writes a poem in response to Hughes:

 

I love my friend

and still do

when we play games

we laugh. I hope she never goes away from me

Because I love my friend.

-Jackie Woodson

 

She was in fourth grade, when she wrote that, can you believe it? Wouldn’t this make a great lesson on poetry writing or writing your own biography? When given the proper tools, children are amazingly astute writers.

 

The book will be published in August; perhaps writing could be a late summer project for your family? If your family can’t wait until August to learn more about Jacqueline Woodson, there are many books to become acquainted with:

 

Picture Books:

This is the Rope (a story of migration)

Each Kindness (a story on bullying)

Middle Grade:

Locomotion

Feathers

 

Young Adult:

Hush

 

Miracles Boys

 

Many of Woodson’s books are multiple award winners, so I’m sure you’ll find at least one good book for your family to enjoy together.

p.s. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her twice and I’m proud to say I acted like a complete idiot each time (gabbing and fawning all over her); but I don’t care. Good authors are my rock stars.

Brown Girl Dreaming could also be the title of my autobiography. What could the title of yours be?

READ. ALL. THE BOOKS!!!

PammyPam

Pam, a.k.a. An Unconventional Librarian, is a curator of YA and children’s literature, a book blogger, coffee drinker and cupcake lover, who seeks multicultural books that appeal to all kids. Pam is also building a Harry Potter collection to enter the record books and she thinks being a little silly never hurts. You can connect with Pam on her website Pinterest page or on her Facebook page.

 

The post Kid Writing and Biographies: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson {Guest Post from The Unconventional Librarian} appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

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brown girl dreaming
By Jacqueline Woodson
Nancy Paulsen Books (an imprint of Penguin)
$16.99
ISBN: 978- 0399252518
Ages 9-12
On shelves August 28th

What does a memoir owe its readers? For that matter, what does a fictionalized memoir written with a child audience in mind owe its readers? Kids come into public libraries every day asking for biographies and autobiographies. They’re assigned them with the teacher’s intent, one assumes, of placing them in the shoes of those people who found their way, or their voice, or their purpose in life. Maybe there’s a hope that by reading about such people the kids will see that life has purpose. That even the most high and lofty historical celebrity started out small. Yet to my mind, a memoir is of little use to child readers if it doesn’t spend a significant fraction of its time talking about the subject when they themselves were young. To pick up brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson is to pick up the world’s best example of precisely how to write a fictionalized memoir. Sharp when it needs to be sharp, funny when it needs to be funny, and a book that can relate to so many other works of children’s literature, Woodson takes her own life and lays it out in such a way that child readers will both relate to it and interpret it through the lens of history itself. It may be history, but this is one character that will give kids the understanding that nothing in life is a given. Sometimes, as hokey as it sounds, it really does come down to your dreams.

Her father wanted to name her “Jack” after himself. Never mind that today, let alone 1963 Columbus, Ohio, you wouldn’t dream of naming a baby girl that way. Maybe her mother writing “Jacqueline” on her birth certificate was one of the hundreds of reasons her parents would eventually split apart. Or maybe it was her mother’s yearning for her childhood home in South Carolina that did it. Whatever the case, when Jackie was one-years-old her mother took her and her two older siblings to the South to live with their grandparents once and for all. Though it was segregated and times were violent, Jackie loved the place. Even when her mother left town to look for work in New York City, she kept on loving it. Later, her mother picked up her family and moved them to Brooklyn and Jackie had to learn the ways of city living versus country living. What’s more, with her talented older siblings and adorable baby brother, she needed to find out what made her special. Told in gentle verse and memory, Jacqueline Woodson expertly recounts her own story and her own journey against a backdrop of America’s civil rights movement. This is the birth of a writer told from a child’s perspective.

You might ask why we are referring to this book as a work of historical fiction, when clearly the memoir is based in fact. Recently I was reading a piece in The New Yorker on the novelist Edward St. Aubyn. St. Aubyn found the best way to recount his own childhood was through the lens of fiction. Says the man, “I wanted the freedom and the sublimatory power of writing a novel . . . And I wanted to write in the tradition which had impressed me the most.” Certainly there’s a much greater focus on what it means to be a work of nonfiction for kids in this day and age. Where in the past something like the Childhood of Famous Americans series could get away with murder, pondering what one famous person thought or felt at a given time, these days we hold children’s nonfiction to a much higher standard. Books like Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s No Crystal Stair, for example, must be called “fiction” for all that they are based on real people and real events. Woodson’s personal memoir is, for all intents and purposes, strictly factual but because there are times when she uses dialogue to flesh out the characters and scenes the book ends up in the fiction section of the library and bookstore. Like St. Aubyn, Woodson is most comfortable when she has the most freedom as an author, not to be hemmed in by a strict structural analysis of what did or did not occur in the past. She has, in a sense then, mastered the art of the fictionalized memoir in a children’s book format.

Because of course in fiction you can give your life a form and a function. You can look back and give it purpose, something nonfiction can do but with significantly less freedom. There is a moment in Jackie’s story when you get a distinct sense of her life turning a corner. In the section “grown folks’ stories” she recounts hearing the tales of the old people then telling them back to her sister and brother in the night. “Retelling each story. / Making up what I didn’t understand / or missed when voices dropped too low . . . / Then I let the stories live / inside my head, again and again / until the real world fades back / into cricket lullabies / and my own dreams.” If ever you wanted a “birth of a writer” sequence in a book, this would be it.

At its heart, that’s really what brown girl dreaming is about. It’s the story of a girl finding her voice and her purpose. If there’s a theme to children’s literature this year it is in the relationship between stories and lies. Jonathan Auxier’s The Night Gardener and Margi Preus’s West of the Moon both spend a great deal of time examining the relationship between the two. Now brown girl dreaming joins with them. When Jackie’s mother tells her daughter that “If you lie . . . one day you’ll steal” the child cannot reconcile the two. “It’s hard to understand how one leads to the other, / how stories could ever / make us criminals.” It’s her mother that equates storytelling with lying, even as her uncle encourages her to keep making up stories. As it is, I can think of no better explanation of how writers work then the central conundrum Jackie is forced to face on her own. “It’s hard to understand / the way my brain works – so different / from everybody around me. / How each new story / I’m told becomes a thing / that happens, / in some other way / to me . . . !”

The choice to make the book a verse novel made sense in the context of Ms. Woodson’s other novels. Verse novels are at their best when they justify their form. A verse novel that’s written in verse simply because it’s the easiest way to tell a long story in a simple format often isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Fortunately, in the case of Ms. Woodson the choice makes infinite sense. Young Jackie is enamored of words and their meanings. The book isn’t told in the first person, but when we consider that she is both subject and author then it’s natural to suspect that the verse best shows the lens through which Jackie, the child, sees the world.

It doesn’t hurt matters any that the descriptive passages have the distinct feeling of poems to them. Individual lines are lovely in and of themselves, of course. Lines like “the heat of summer / could melt the mouth / so southerners stayed quiet.” Or later a bit of reflection on the Bible. “Even Salome intrigues us, her wish for a man’s head / on a platter – who could want this and live / to tell the story of that wanting?” But full-page written portions really do have the feel of poems. Like you could pluck them out of the book and display them and they’d stand on their own, out of context. The section labeled “ribbons” for example felt like pure poetry, even as it relayed facts. As Woodson writes, “When we hang them on the line to dry, we hope / they’ll blow away in the night breeze / but they don’t. Come morning, they’re right where / we left them / gently moving in the cool air, eager to anchor us / to childhood.” And so we get a beautiful mixing of verse and truth and fiction and memoir at once.

It was while reading the book that I got the distinct sense that this was far more than a personal story. The best memoirs, fictionalized or otherwise, are the ones that go beyond their immediate subjects and speak to something greater than themselves. Ostensibly, brown girl dreaming is just the tale of one girl’s journey from the South to the North and how her perceptions of race and self changed during that time. But the deeper you get into the book the more you realize that what you are reading is a kind of touchstone for other children’s books about the African-American experience in America. Turn to page eight and a reference to the Woodsons connections to Thomas Woodson of Chillicothe leads you directly to Jefferson’s Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Page 32 and the trip from North to South and the deep and abiding love for the place evokes The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963. Page 259 and the appearance of The Jackson Five and their Afros relates beautifully to Rita Williams-Garcia’s P.S. Be Eleven. Page 297 and a reference to slaves in New York City conjures up Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. Even Jackie’s friend Maria has a story that ties in nicely to Sonia Manzano’s The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano. I even saw threads from Woodson’s past connect to her own books. Her difficulty reading but love of words conjures up Locomotion. Visiting her uncle in jail makes me think of Visiting Day as well as After Tupac and D Foster. And, of course, her personal history brings to mind her Newbery Honor winning picture book Show Way (which, should you wish to do brown girl dreaming in a book club, would make an ideal companion piece).

It’s not just other books either. Writers are advised to write what they know and that their family stories are their history. But when Woodson writes her history she’s broadening her scope. Under her watch her family’s history is America’s history. Woodson’s book manages to tie-in so many moments in African-American history that kids should know about. Segregation, marches, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. One thing I really appreciated about the book was that it also looked at aspects of some African-American life that I’ve just never seen represented in children’s literature before. Can you honestly name me any other books for kids where the children are Jehovah’s Witnesses? Aside from Tom Angleberger’s The Qwikpick Papers I’m drawing a blank.

The flaws? Well it gets off to a slow start. The first pages didn’t immediately grab me, and I have to hope that if there are any kids out there who read the same way that I do, with my immature 10-year-old brain, that they’ll stick with it. Once the family moves to the South everything definitely picks up. The only other objection I had was that I wanted to know so much more about Jackie’s family after the story had ended. In her Author’s Note she mentions meeting her father again years later. What were the circumstances behind that meeting? Why did it happen? And what did Dell and Hope and Roman go on to do with their lives? Clearly a sequel needs to happen. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this.

I’m just going to get grandiose on you here and say that reading this is basically akin to reading a young person’s version of Song of Solomon. It’s America and its racial history. It’s deeply personal, recounting the journey of one girl towards her eventual vocation and voice. It’s a fictionalized memoir that nonetheless tells greater truths than most of our nonfiction works for kids. It is, to put it plainly, a small work of art. Everyone who reads it will get something different out of it. Everyone who reads it will remember some small detail that spoke to them personally. It’s the book adults will wish they’d read as kids. It’s the book that hundreds of thousands of kids will read and continue to read for decades upon decades upon decades. It’s Woodson’s history and our own. It is amazing.

On shelves August 28th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

• No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

• Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon

Other Reviews: Richie’s Picks

Misc: A look at the book and an interview with Ms. Woodson from Publishers Weekly.

Videos: In this opening keynote from SLJ’s Day of Dialog in 2014, Ms. Woodson talks about the path to this book.

Jacqueline Woodson keynote | SLJ Day of Dialog 2014 from School Library Journal on Vimeo.

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“Art is a language,” Children’s book illustrator E.B. Lewis told a roomful of illustrators, aspiring and professional. What is a language, Lewis asked. “Letters of the alphabet that join together to form words, then paragraphs. And finally stories and jokes,” he answered his own question. And the mark of fluency? Maybe not what you think. “Telling [...]

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What better day for book trailers than a Saturday?

Beneath A Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson

Nancy Paulsen Books; 2012

Jacqueline Woodson gives an insightful interview telling what motivated her to write the book

Filed under: Saturday Trailers Tagged: Jacqueline Woodson, saturday trailer

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Check out the trailers for Hallowed and Beneath a Meth Moon. Don't forget to write your review on YABC if you've read one of these titles. Every review you write enters you into our monthly drawing to win a Bag O' Books straight from the YABC ARC Shelf!

But first, here is Taylor's amazing music video of Safe and Sound, one of the songs from the upcoming Hunger Games film, which just premiered on MTV last night. How beautiful is this song?!




Hallowed by Cynthia Hand
Release Date: Jan 17, 2012
Click here to review this book on YABC.





Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson
Release Date: Feb 2, 2012
Click here to review this book on YABC.

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I was saddened to learn of the death of children’s author Georgess McHargue on Monday, July 18th.  It seems that this was a death our community missed and I am sorry for it.  Ms. McHargue penned many a fine children’s novel, but my favorite would have to be Stoneflight, a tale of New York City’s statuary come to life.  According to her obituary, “After working at Golden Press, Georgess became an editor at Doubleday. In her long career as an author, she published 35 books, many are for young adults, some focused on archaeology, mythology and history. She was nominated for a National Book Award for The Beasts of Never, and wrote many reviews over the years for the NY Times Book Review.”  Jane Yolen was a friend of hers and alerted me to her passing.  Thank you, Jane, for letting us know.  She was a brilliant writer.

• Diane Roback, now I doff my hat to you.  The recent PW article on Colorful Characters is a boon to the industry.  I dare say it’s brilliant.  One does wonder how Walter Mayes, who is not old, feels about being included amongst the dead and elderly.  I hope he enjoys it!  Being known as a “colorful character” will keep folks talking about you (and writing about you) for decades to come.

• That’s cool. Zetta Elliott had a chance to interview and profile Jacqueline Woodson in Ms. Magazine’s blog recently.  Good title too: Writing Children’s Books While Black and Feminist.  The part where she’s asked to name “five other black LGBTQ authors of children’s literature” is telling.  I don’t know that I could either.

• Living as we do in an essentially disposable society, Dan Blank’s piece on Preserving Your Legacy: Backing Up Your Digital Media makes for necessary reading.  As someone who has lost countless photos and files through my own negligence, this piece rings true to me.  Particularly the part where Dan says he makes sure that “Once a day, I backup my photo library onto an external hard drive.”  Anthony Horowitz once told me the same thing.  How’s THAT for name dropping, eh eh?

• Jobs!  Jobs in the publishing industry!  Jobs I say!

• And much along the same lines, were you aware that there’s a group out there made up entirely of youngsters who are entering the publishing industry?  At 33 I reserve the right to call twenty-somethings “youngsters”.  I am also allowed to shake my cane at them and use phrases like “whippersnappers” and “hooligans”.  But I digress.  The Children’s Book Council has an Early Career Committee
  11 Comments on Fusenews: Who reviews the reviewers?, last added: 8/2/2011
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  Peter D. Sieruta said, on 8/1/2011 9:06:00 PM
  

  Quick correction: Georgess McHargue got her NBA nomination for THE IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE, not THE BEASTS OF NEVER.

  Colleen said, on 8/2/2011 1:12:00 AM
  

  Wow. Now that I know I was being manipulated by a “band of hippie hammer-lovers” or imperialist loving trains I don’t think I’ll look back on my son’s early childhood the same again. Although honestly, he just loved the trains and talking construction vehicles. Is that sooooo bad???

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 8/2/2011 4:47:00 AM
  

  Good catch, Peter! And bad show, oh obituary writer.

  Colleen, I think you’re in the clear. Unless you son starts colonizing other kids’ sandboxes “for their own good”. Then at least you know who to blame.

  Walter Mayes said, on 8/2/2011 7:34:00 AM
  

  I am absolutely thrilled to be a Colorful Character and honored to be among such greats!

  Genevieve said, on 8/2/2011 8:07:00 AM
  

  Love the Children’s Book Council Harry Potter link! I am totally going to name a local trivia team That’s So Ravenclaw, if the originators wouldn’t mind.
  (And as I’m headed to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios this weekend, I’ll look for a chance to use the phrase.)

  Sharon said, on 8/2/2011 9:34:00 AM
  

  Love the minimalist posters, especially the ones for The Princess and the Pea and The Wizard of Oz (though it was missing ‘home’). Thanks for the link.

  Adam Rex said, on 8/2/2011 11:32:00 AM
  

  Is that Spinelli cover supposed to be about a boy and his older triplet brothers? Or did the illustrator have only the one model and not enough imagination to change somebody’s hair color?

  Carl in Charlotte said, on 8/2/2011 1:16:00 PM
  

  Thanks so much for mentioning my post. I’m thrilled! And that cover is obviously a young Henry Winkler, dreaming of being the Fonz.

  Doret said, on 8/2/2011 1:46:00 PM
  

  Elliott posted the full and unedited interview with Woodson in two parts on her blog. Its a must read if you like the profile in Ms. Magazine

  Carin Siegfried said, on 8/2/2011 6:02:00 PM
  

  Speaking of youngsters to publishing, the AAP has been sponsoring the Young to Publishing Group for 10 years now! I really enjoyed it when I was a newly minted editorial assistant in New York in the early 2000s and hopefully it’s still helpful for other newbies. Check it out at: http://youngtopublishing.com/

  Jen said, on 8/2/2011 7:27:00 PM
  

  You might appreciate today’s drawing lesson on how to draw bunnies: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2011/aug/02/how-to-draw-bunnies-simone-lia
  (and note that Simone Lia, as well as Oliver Jeffers in his post (Same series) on how to draw penguins…. both compare various appendages to sausages). Ah, the UK. Not sure our american illustrators would use the same analogy.

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Last month at MRA, I listened to Jacqueline Woodson speak about her writing process. It wasn’t the first time I heard her speak and I hope it won’t be my last. She is one of the writers I consider as my personal mentor. Not to be over-dramatic, but listening to her last month changed my [...]

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So I’m reading through my weekly edition of AL Direct and I notice that no matter what worldwide occurrence takes place, librarians are always there. Whether it’s damage to two libraries in Egypt, stories from the librarians in Christchurch, New Zealand, or how the Wisconsin Library Association delayed Library Legislative Day due to the protests, the profession is there.  That last story was of particular interest to me, since I had wondered whether any school librarians were amongst the protesters in Wisconsin lately.  According to the article, they most certainly are.  You go, guys!!  Seriously, I want to hear more about it.  If any of you know any school librarians marching in WI, send them my way.  I’d love to do a full post on them.

• Speaking of folks in the news, I have to give full credit to author/illustrator Katie Davis for consistently locating the hotspots in children’s literature and convincing folks to talk to her about them on her fabulous podcast.  In the past she’s managed to finagle everyone from the editor who wanted to replace the n-word in Huckleberry Finn to James Kennedy on the 90-Second Newbery.  Now she’s managed to get Bruce Coville to talk about what went down when he and fellow children’s author Liz Levy got stuck in Egypt during the protest period.  That Katie.  She’s got a nose for news.

• I’m having a lot of fun reading How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely these days, and I can’t help but see echoes of the plot in this story about the man behind the Hardy Boys novels.  We hear about the various Carolyn Keenes all the time, but why not the Dixons?  After reading this old piece in the Washington Post from 1998 (The Hardy Boys The Final Chapter) I feel vindicated.  I reread some of my old Three Investigators novels not too long ago and they STILL held up!  I always knew they were better than The Hardy Boys.  Now I have proof.  I was going to save the link to this essay until the end of the Fusenews today, but it’s so amusing and so delightfully written that I just have to encourage you, first thing, to give it a look.  Thanks to The Infomancer for the link.

• Fun Fact About Newbery Winning Author Robin McKinley: She’s learning to knit.  Related Sidenote: She also has a blog.  Did you know this?  I did not know this.  And look at the meticulous use of footnotes.  McKinley should write the next Pale Fire.  I would
  10 Comments on Fusenews: “The Hardy boys were tense with a realization of their peril.”, last added: 2/25/2011
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  Jonathan Auxier said, on 2/23/2011 11:21:00 PM
  

  I’ve been meaning to pick up HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST ever since John August mentioned it on his blog. He tells the story of optioning the book in his usual charming fashion here: http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/how-i-became-a-famous-novelist. I’m gratified to hear someone dumping on the Hardy Boys. I hated those books as a kid … along with all the other series in which nothing actually happened to the characters. Why read a book that ends where it starts? (I will make an exception for Beckett.) That bias is probably the same reason I don’t watch procedural dramas today.

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 2/24/2011 6:04:00 AM
  

  I’m probably reading the book for the same reason you’ve been meaning to pick it up. Which is to say, I think Matt read the John August piece, got intrigued, read it, and passed it on to me. It feels so up-to-date and contemporary too. I have to wonder how well it will age, or if the books that are blockbusters now will continue to remain the same kind of blockbusters ten or twenty years down the road.

  Three Investigators 4-Evah.

  Julia Karr said, on 2/24/2011 10:58:00 AM
  

  Ah, I was always a Nancy Drew fan and only read Hardy Boys comics (put out by Walt Disney when they were airing The Hardy Boys on The Mickey Mouse Club.) However, my tender young writer’s heart was crushed when I found out that Carolyn Keene was a psuedonym for a stable of writers. *sigh*

  Jean said, on 2/24/2011 11:48:00 AM
  

  “You go, guys!!!” How about a little objectivity? How about a Wisconsin public school where the librarian’s job description, according to the principal, was “to provide release time for the teachers”, which they were entitled to in their union negotiated contract? Yes, I went – to a non-union charter school (at half the pay), not to protest in Madison.

  Dan McCoy said, on 2/24/2011 1:41:00 PM
  

  >bites his lip, Jupiter Jones-style and nods approvingly<

  Sondy said, on 2/24/2011 1:57:00 PM
  

  I am SO with you on the 3 Investigators! Jupiter Jones rocks!

  Hey, I’m planning to do a little piece of Library Advocacy this weekend with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. I’ll post about it on my blog, and then will try to get a little attention… We’re supposed to be happy that they aren’t planning any further cuts this year, after they cut 30% the last two years. I am glad to have a job back, but it’s still rotten for the people of the county….

  Tracey said, on 2/24/2011 4:18:00 PM
  

  I LOVED the 3 Investigators!

  I was in first grade when the childrens librarian introduced me to the Hardy Boys. I didn’t like them that much, but I could read them very quickly, which mattered to me for some reason. And then, I found Nancy Drew and I never picked up another Hardy Boys again. To this day, I wonder why the librarian showed me the Hardy Boys but not Nancy Drew.

  Lisa Yee said, on 2/25/2011 8:30:00 AM
  

  L is for Lisa who loves your blog.

  I’m in Boston this weekend, signing at Peter Reynold’s Blue Bunny bookstore on Saturday. When I saw on your blog that there’s a Gorey exhibit in town I was soooooo excited. Can’t wait to see it!

  Sergio Ruzzier said, on 2/25/2011 8:36:00 AM
  

  Thank you Betsy! I should get images from the show in a week or so.

  Joanne Fritz said, on 2/25/2011 7:12:00 PM
  

  The entire first chapter of HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE on a bathroom wall? Some people have waaaaay too much time on their hands.

  Great post, Betsy!

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