It seems like every year there are one or two middle grade books
upon which everyone agrees. Last year,
Cynthia Kadohata’s The Thing About Luck received five starred reviews,
as did Rita Williams-Garcia’s P.S. Be Eleven and Holly Black’s Doll
Bones. The year before that, R. J.
Palacio’s Wonder was on everyone’s lips.
This year, that honor seems to going to Jacqueline Woodson’s
autobiography-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving
book.
Starting from Part I, “i am born”, Woodson follows the
trajectory of her life from Ohio to North Carolina and up to New York during a
tumultuous and watershed time in American history. In spare but very affecting verse, she writes
about her father, whom as a child she did not really remember, her mother, her
grandparents and especially her siblings.
2014 has been a very good year for middle grade works in
verse, seeing several outstanding examples, including Andrea Davis Pinkey’s The
Red Pencil, Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover and Skila Brown’s Caminar. The past few years have brought more
prominence to the genre, with the Newbery Medal going to Katherine Applegate’s The
One and Only Ivan in 2013 and a Newbery honor to Thanhha Lai’s Inside
Out & Back Again in 2012. Many
pundits agree that Brown Girl Dreaming is the frontrunner for the 2015
Newbery Award.
Woodson’s verse is deceptively simple. Free verse, with the occasional haiku thrown
in, Woodson uses language to evoke the feelings, memories, sounds and smells of
her childhood. “The crickets/ and frogs
call out./ Sometimes, there’s the soft/ who-whoo
of an owl lost/ amid the pines./ Even the dogs won’t rest until/ they’ve
howled/ at the moon” (emphasis by the author).
As I said, Brown Girl Dreaming has garnered great
attention this year, including six starred reviews. Kirkus
Review writes, “Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a
graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets
will linger long after the page is turned.”
Publishers Weekly emphasizes
the strength of Woodson’s descriptions, saying, “The writer’s passion for
stories and storytelling permeates the memoir, explicitly addressed in her
early attempts to write books and implicitly conveyed through her sharp images
and poignant observations seen through the eyes of a child.”
In this narrative, food is culture. Woodson writes longingly of food, as it
connects her to her sometimes disconnected family and her new friends in New
York. Her family gathers, “sitting an running their mouths/ while
the pots on the stove bubbled/ with collards and sizzled with chicken/ and corn
bread baked up brown/ inside Kay’s big black oven” (emphasis by the author). Later, Woodson marks the prosperity of her
family by the quality of the meals.
Plain pancakes in lean times are followed up with syrup, fruit and butter
in more comfortable times. Woodson’s
relationship with her best friend Maria is punctuated by descriptions of Maria’s
mother’s cooking. “She pulls the crisp
skin/ away from the pernil, eats the
pork shoulder/ with rice and beans/…Yeah,
I say. This is only for us. The family”
(Emphasis by the author).
Because Woodson discusses many seminal moments in American
history, there are many directions a reader may go if they want further
reading. Perhaps the first books I would
recommend are Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be
Eleven (and yes, I am aware that I recommend these books a lot, but
honestly, they’re worth it). These books
cover topics like the Black Panthers (whose breakfast programs are mentioned in
Brown Girl Dreaming) and the Vietnam War, as well as being concerned
with self-identity, maturity and responsibility, all things Woodson touches upon
in her book. Another beautiful book that
I often find myself steering patrons towards is Cynthia Levinson’s micro-history
of the Civil Rights movement called We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham
Children’s March. Woodson wrote
about the training civil rights protesters had to undergo, training to help
them stay non-violent and strong.
Levinson gives details about such training, undergone by children and
young adults in this startling and stirring account.
When the Newbery announcement is made this coming January, I
won’t at all be surprised to hear Brown Girl Dreaming and Jacqueline
Woodson’s name being called. This is a
vital book, a pleasurable book. It is
the kind of book that readers of any sex, color or creed can get lost inside.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown
Girl Dreaming. New York: Nancy
Paulsen Books, 2014. ISBN: 9780399252518
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