Jacqueline Woodson

Woodson and Lewis’ latest collaboration unfolds with harsh beauty and the ominousness of opportunities lost.

Narrator Chloe is a little grade-school diva who decides with casual hubris that the new girl, Maya, is just not good enough. Woodson shows through Chloe’s own words how she and her friends completely ignore Maya, with her raggedy shoes and second-hand clothes, rebuffing her every overture. Readers never learn precisely why Chloe won’t return Maya’s smile or play jacks or jump show more rope with her. Those who have weathered the trenches of childhood understand that such decisions are not about reason; they are about power. The matter-of-fact tone of Chloe’s narration paired against the illustrations' visual isolation of Maya creates its own tension. Finally, one day, a teacher demonstrates the ripple effect of kindness, inspiring Chloe—but Maya disappears from the classroom. Suddenly, Chloe is left holding a pebble with the weight of a stone tablet. She gets a hard lesson in missed opportunities. Ripples, good and bad, have repercussions. And sometimes second chances are only the stuff of dreams. Lewis dazzles with frame-worthy illustrations, masterful use of light guiding readers’ emotional responses.

Something of the flipside to the team’s The Other Side (2001), this is a great book for teaching kindness . (Picture book. 5-8)

-Kirkus Review show less

This is the story of Iris, and of her parents and of her daughter. It's the story of Aubrey, the father of her daughter, and of his mother. This is a family saga and despite it being told sparely, it digs into the experiences and lives of the family over three generations with depth and compassion.

Iris grows up in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, nurtured by her solidly middle class parents. Her mother holds her own mother's memories of the Tulsa Massacre, when an entire community was destroyed show more and her father has worked hard to raise his family into the middle class. She's about to have her coming out party, when she becomes pregnant and that event never occurs. Within a few months, she goes from a girl with everything to look forward to, to the girl parents warn their children about. But her story doesn't end there, and while her path forward isn't easy, or without harm done, she perseveres.

Woodson's writing is beautiful. There isn't a single unnecessary word in this novel. She has a talent for bringing her characters to life in very few words and of making their experiences vivid to the reader. show less

The second "how I became a writer" novel (even if this one is autobiographical) I've read in a while, and it couldn't be more different from The Idiot. Woodson revels in the tempest of impressions, words, people, memories and the only-noticeable-in-hindsight thrum of history of growing up and realising you're part of something, using poetry to shine little pinhole spotlights on one image at a time and narrative to piece them together.

I didn't just appear one day. I didn't just wake up and show more know how to write my name. show less

This story follows several generations of a Black family. Melody, the youngest member of the family, is coming of age at 16. She is angry at her mother Iris, who was a teenage mother and then left Melody with her loving father. Iris's parents tried to provide the best opportunities for Iris, but were outraged at her teenage pregnancy.

The book examines how attitudes about family, sex, and respectability change over the generations. It depicts love between family members, and how that love show more sometimes manifests in hurtful ways. It explores generational trauma: the grandmother was an infant in Tulsa and bears scars from the Tulsa Massacre, and that trauma manifests in different ways for her daughter and granddaughter.

The book jumps around between characters and time places a lot, usually in the first person. With a less-skilled author, this would have been really confusing, but Woodson gives each character such a unique voice that it's not hard to follow what's happening. Woodson also packs a lot into a very short book: the book examines race, family, trauma, sexuality, responsibility, and a lot of other topics. show less