Jacqueline Woodson Marathon

"Sometimes, when I'm sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing's coming to me, I remember my fifth grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said, "This is really good." The way, I -- the skinny girl in the back of the classroom who was always getting into trouble for talking or missed homework assignments -- sat up a little straighter, folded my hands on the desks, smiled and began to believe in me."

According to Jacqueline Woodson's website, none of the four books I read during my Jacqueline Woodson Marathon are autobiographical. It's probably just unavoidable, though, to find bits of truths from the author's life in each one.

For instance, the opening quote could be Lonnie (aka Locomotion) or Frannie (in Feathers) talking. Although she was born in Columbus, Ohio, Woodson has lived in Brooklyn since she was 7 years old. City life features strongly in all four of the books I read. She speaks ASL, which is important in Feathers, as Frannie's brother Sean is deaf. Music is very important to Jacqueline Woodson, and the music and lyrics of Tupac Shakur are central to the plot of After Tupac and D Foster. Woodson sometimes sits on the stoop to write. The narrator and her friends Neeka and D in After Tupac and D Foster spend hours (in all weather) on the front stoop. And if she couldn't write, Woodson admits to a desire to play for the NBA for the Knicks. One of Neeka's brothers in After Tupac and D Foster goes from basketball crazy to a basketball scholarship to Georgetown over the course of the book.

Locomotion

by Jacqueline Woodson

G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003

review copy: public library

"Lonnie's voice was in my head." This novel in verse is told in the voice of a fifth grade boy who is in foster care. His sister is in different foster family. Writing poetry is lifesaving for Lonnie. This book would be interesting paired with Love That Dog by Sharon Creech.

Peace, Locomotion

by Jacqueline Woodson

G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2009

review copy: provided by the publisher

"This book started out being about one kind of peace and then became about the many ways we search for and eventually find peace." In this book, Lonnie writes letters to his sister in an attempt to keep safe the memories of their childhood (both before their parents were killed in the fire and now that they are living in two different foster families). Both Lonnie and his sister Lili are becoming more and more a part of their separate foster families and they have to find peace with that. One of Lonnie's foster brothers comes home from the war without part of one leg -- he has to find peace with his new body. Lonnie's new friend Clyde struggles to be accepted for who he is -- another way of finding peace.

Feathers

by Jacqueline Woodson

G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2007

review copy: public library

"...I wanted to write about the many ways people find Hope in the world." This book has a complicated mix of themes: race, organized religion, the holiness of living without organized religion, false assumptions, bullies, and, in a surprise plot turn, mixed-race adoptions.

After Tupac and D Foster

by Jacqueline Woodson

G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2008

review copy: public library

"I think Tupac was an amazing activist..." Two strands are woven in this book. First, there is Tupac Shakur -- his music, his lyrics, his life (and his mother's life) as an activist for disenfranchised black youth. And then there is family -- tight city neighborhood family, foster family, families that include a gay brother who is wrongly jailed for a crime he did not commit.

As a middle class white woman who grew up on a small rural town, I read Jacqueline Woodson's books from the outside looking in. The worlds she writes about are as foreign to me as another country. She writes with language I do not hear in my everyday life, and the urban world in which her characters live is far different even from the small city in which I now live. Reading these four books made it abundantly clear to me how few books there are in my classroom library or in our school library that are written from anything but a white middle class world view. After Tupac and D Foster is a bit too YA for my 4th grade classroom, but the other three are on my to-buy list.

Another Story That Dovetails in the Middle

I'm slightly goosebumpy about this coincidence: Last year on almost exactly this date I wrote about how my one example of Stories That Dovetail in the Middle had suddenly turned into a collection of three.

Here's the newest addition to the collection. It doesn't quite fit because you can't read it from either end towards the middle. However, it DOES have a two stories that work towards and away from the middle, so I'm including it!

Artie and Julie
by Chih-Yuan Chen
Heryin Books, Inc., September 2008
review copy provided by the publisher

Artie is a lion; Julie is a rabbit. Their parallel stories are told on split pages. At the same time Artie is learning to stalk and eat rabbits on the top half of each page, Julie is learning is learning to run fast and jump high to protect herself from lions on the bottom half of each page. (I'm predicting that kids will love these little "books within the book" and the mirroring of the stories!)

In the middle, both young animals are deemed to be sufficiently trained to venture out on their own. Both Artie and Julie get distracted by a jellyberry patch. Their stories come together full-page when a storm comes and they both seek shelter in a cave. By the time the sun comes out, they are friends. Their stories split again when they return home, and they each tell a new story to their parents that night -- the story of how lions and rabbits can become friends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR:

From the Gecko Press site:

Chih-Yuan Chen, three-time winner of the prestigious Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, is an illustrator and writer from Taiwan.

"It is my hope that children from all over the world can learn to accept different people and things, and see the world with broader views and minds."

From the Kane Miller site:

Chih-Yuan Chen lives and works in Taiwan. Born in 1975, Chen is tall and thin, and does not like to wear suits. He does, of course, like to take walks.

CORETTA SCOTT

WOW! I just picked up CORETTA SCOTT by Ntozake Shange. I was expecting this book because I am a HUGE Kadir Nelson fan these days. I had seen the cover online and read a bit about it, but it so surpassed all that I was expecting. This is a gorgeous book about such an important lady.

The story of Coretta Scott King is told in poetry by Ntozake Shange. It is amazing poetry. Each page is a poem in itself and the pages work together perfectly. Not one word is wasted--each carries power as part of the story of Coretta. The first page reads:

some southern mornings
the moon
sits like an orange
sliver by the treetops

I like so much about this book--a review can't really do it justice. The writing is amazing. The illustrations are unbelievable. The cover is stunning. There is really no way I could have passed the book without buying it. The cover art draws you in and each illustration is as incredible as the one before it. Kadir Nelson at his best--I continue to be amazed at the quantity and quality of the work that he is doing.

When I opened it, I hadn't realized that it was a poem. I was expecting a more typical biography. Instead, Shange uses verse to tell the story of Coretta Scott King before and after she met Martin Luther King, Jr. The way that Shange creates a portait of Coretta in which she is her own person, and also a person connected to Martin Luther King, Jr. is important.

Like I said, no review could do this book justice at all. A very powerful and gorgeous book about an amazing woman.

Diversity Rocks -- Native Peoples

Every child should be able to find him or herself in books. We're doing better, but we're not there yet. Not anywhere near there.

Today I share two books that will hold up a mirror for Native American children. One that acknowledges the pain of the past, and one that is full of hope for the future.






Shin-chi's Canoe
by Nicola I. Campbell
illustrated by Kim LaFave
Groundwood Books, 2008
review copy provided by the publisher

From the flap copy: "Nicola I. Campbell is Interior Salish and Métis...Many members of her family, including her grandfather and mother, attended residential school."

In order to "civilize" them, Europeans forced hundreds of thousands of Native children to attend residential schools, where they were taught European culture, religion and language in replacement of their own.  Shin-Chi's Canoe tells the story of a little girl and her brother riding in a cattle truck away from their family and the beloved landscape of their home, which they would not see again "until the sockeye salmon return," to the separation and strange routines of the residential school. The strength of the children and the power of their own culture is shown when the little brother finds time to go alone to the river, experience nature deeply, sing his grandfather's prayer song, and send the little canoe his father carved down the river back towards home. We also see strength and resilience when the little brother and his new friend find a way to steal food from the school's root cellar! 

The beautiful but spare illustrations communicate with gesture, line and color the pull of home, and the children's resistance to the dulling experience of the school.

Niwechihaw (I Help)
by Caitlin Dale Nicholson
text translated into Cree by Leona Morin-Neilson
Groundwood Books, 2008

From the flap copy: "Caitlin Dale Nicholson is a graduate of the First Nations Studies program at the University of Norther British Columbia...Leona Morin-Neilson teaches Cree at the "Power of Friendship" Aboriginal HeadStart Program in Prince George, British Columbia and at the University of Norther British Columbia. She also teaches people in her community about traditional plants and how they can be used for medicinal purposes."

This is a very simple story about a boy and his grandmother out for a walk in the woods to pick rosehips. Everything his grandmother does, he does in his own way. Some things seem universal -- "driving" his toy car while grandmother drives the car, walking, helping, picking. But some things show how culture and tradition are passed on -- he listens and he prays. In the end, when his grandmother sits, he says, "Not me!" as he pulls back on his slingshot. No matter what else he is, he's a BOY!

Each page features a beautiful painting of either grandmother or the grandson.  There is one short sentence below the picture, first in Cree, then in English. For example, "Kohkom pimohtew. Kohkom walks." is paired with "Nipimohatan. I walk."

A recipe for rosehip tea is included at the end.

The Black Book of Colors

The Black Book of Colors
by Menena Cottin
illustrated by Rosana Faria
translated from the Spanish by Elisa Amado
braille translations provided by the CNIB
Groundwood Books, first published in 2006, first English edition, 2008
review copy provided by the publisher


I rarely link to Amazon, but if you haven't held this book in your hands yet, you're going to want to follow the link and at least get a better look at the cover. You won't see much else if you "Look Inside!"

But that's the point.

This is a book about color that will help a sighted person understand how a blind person experiences color -- not visually, but through the senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing. For example, "Red is sour like unripe strawberries and as sweet as watermelon. It hurts when he finds it on his scraped knee."

This book is bilingual -- English and braille. Each page of text (the English is white on the black page with the raised dots of the braille above it) faces a page with a sensory illustration. The illustration page is all black, with a raised image of the description of the color. On the page about red, there are strawberries on a vine that you can feel with your finger tips (and which a sighted person can't resist looking at by tipping the book in the light to see the raised image).

This book meets the Diversity Rocks! Challenge in a myriad of ways. The author and illustrator are both Venezuelan, and the translator is Guatemalan. The book is bilingual in English and braille. I have never seen a mainstream children's book with readable braille. And it's not a book about blindness, it's a book about colors. Amazing. I can't wait to share it with my students. I would love to share it with a child sitting on my lap with her eyes closed, reading along with me with her fingers.