Both personal and universal, Brown Girl Dreaming is full of the bright happiness of childhood memories. Jacqueline Woodson’s poetic memoir is rich and layered like a buttered biscuit, melting on the tongue. Through the poetic eyes of young Jacqueline, we smell Dixie Peach Hair Grease on a Saturday night, taste Maria’s mother’s pasteles, and see the light of captured fireflies. Woodson’s poems display the little beauties and big sorrows of life, but are always infused with hope.
Jacket Description:
“Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.”
Reading Level: 10+ years
Age Range: 10+ years
Genre: Middle-Grade Poetry, Autobiography, Memoir
Length: 368 pages
Awards: Newbery Honor, National Book Award, NAACP Image Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Sibert Honor Award
Jacqueline Woodson’s Bio (from the back of the book):
“Jacqueline Woodson is the 2014 National Book Award Winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award, and Sibert Honor Award. Woodson was recently named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include The Other Side; Each Kindness; the Caldecott Honor Book Coming on Home Soon; the Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award and was adapted into a miniseries directed by Spike Lee. Jacqueline is also the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature, and the winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and was the 2013 United States nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.”
Jacqueline Woodson can be found on her website and @jacqueline_woodson on Instagram.
Watch Jacqueline Woodson’s TED Talk What reading slowly taught me about writing on YouTube.
The Lighthouse 