Author’s works deal with issues faced by kids who are ‘different’
Ohio native Jacqueline Woodson — winner of a 2014 National Book Award and the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature — has two new books for children, both focused on how kids deal with being different and marginalized.
“The Day You Begin” (ages 5 to 8), written by Woodson and illustrated by Rafael Lopez, is a picture book about children who might be poor, awkward, lonely, new to the country or in other ways feeling different from those around them.
“There will be times when the world feels like a place that you’re standing all the way outside of,” Woodson writes. Lopez’s acrylic painting depicts a boy standing apart and gazing at a group of five other children interacting cheerfully on a playground.
Each outsider child gradually gains courage and confidence as the text and images subtly show the other children becoming more empathetic.
Woodson also has a new novel, “Harbor Me” (ages 10 and older) with a premise rather like the 1985 movie “The Breakfast Club.”
In this case, six “special learners” in the fifth-sixth grades are assigned by their wise teacher to spend an hour a day simply talking to one another, with no adults in the room. Slowly, they learn to trust one another Author Jacqueline Woodson “The Day You Begin” (Nancy Paulsen, 32 pages, $18.99)
and begin sharing the difficulties in their lives.
One boy fears for and desperately misses his father, an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic who was suddenly taken away by officials. Another boy’s family is so poor that he can’t buy lunch or milk. An African-American boy tells stories of the police harassing friends and relatives and expresses his fears about walking alone on the New York streets. The girl who narrates the book struggles to find the courage to tell the group that her father is in prison. “Harbor Me” (Nancy Paulsen, 192 pages, $17.99)
In “Harbor Me,” too, Woodson allows children to grow aware of and articulate their feelings and to trust one another. The title refers to a story the teacher told the group about the original natives of New York, the Lenape people, whose land was taken from them.
“Mrs. Laverne said every day we should ask ourselves, ‘If the worst thing in the world happened, would I help protect someone else? Would I let myself be a harbor for someone who needs it?’”
Throughout her books for young readers, Woodson has championed tolerance and change.
In “Each Kindness” (ages 5 to 8), a girl and her friends shun a new girl who eventually stops going to school. A lesson learned late, readers discover, is better than a lesson never learned.
“Brown Girl Dreaming” (ages 10 and older) — Woodson’s memoir and winner of the 2014 National Book Award for young readers — explains in striking and poignant free verse the author’s feelings about growing up AfricanAmerican in the 1960s.
The author, now living in Brooklyn, New York, was born in Columbus and lived near Nelsonville before her family moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where she spent her early years. Her family moved to Brooklyn when she was about 7.
Woodson, 55, has written two dozen-plus books for young readers. Also among her awards are the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the 2018 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and two Coretta Scott King honors.
In a 2016 interview with The Dispatch, Woodson said she writes for young readers because that is the audience she thinks best suits her voice as a writer.
“It’s such an important time in our lives,” she said. “We’re growing so quickly. And it’s a period where I have so many deep memories. I can write from it and write to it.”