Books by Jacqueline Woodson and Complete Book Reviews

Jacqueline Woodson, Author Laurel Leaf Library $4.5 (128p) ISBN 978-0-440-22797-7
The daughter of an interracial couple, 14-year-old Staggerlee is already an outsider when she wonders if she is gay, too. PW's starred review called this a ""poignant tale of self-discovery"" and praised Woodson's ""graceful, poetic"" prose. Ages 12-
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers $14 (0p) ISBN 978-0-385-30416-0
Feni's visitor Rebecca, 15, comes from Harlem, is pregnant and is sleeping in Feni's room. It's almost too much for the 12-year-old to bear: she sees little enough of her corporate-executive mother without having to entertain her friend's daughter....
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers $14 (131p) ISBN 978-0-385-30796-3
Maizon, 12, wins a scholarship to Blue Hill, an exclusive, girls-only academy in Connecticut. She reluctantly leaves her Brooklyn home for unfamiliar surroundings, apprehensive about being one of only five African American students at the school....
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Laurel Leaf Library $3.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-440-21420-5
In PW 's words, ``Woodson's deep understanding of and concern for the role of black women in society is evident as she eloquently introduces the reader to teenage pregnancy, alternate lifestyles and adoption in her moving, powerful story.'' Ages 12-u
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers $13.95 (112p) ISBN 978-0-385-30906-6
Completing the trilogy begun with Last Summer with Maizon and Maizon at Blue Hill , Woodson revisits her heroines Margaret and Maizon as their close friendship is newly tested. Undergoing the transformations of adolescence, they also find their...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Dutton Books $17.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-525-93721-0
Acclaimed young-adult writer Woodson (Maizon at Blue Hill) crosses over to adult fiction with this family novel that's brilliant, moving, semi-surreal-and daring, as the author fearlessly loads her palette with words that can offer great color but...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Scholastic $14.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-590-45880-1
Woodson's (I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This) perceptively wrought novel imaginatively tackles such weighty issues as racism and sexuality. At age 13, Melanin Sun, an African American boy growing up in Brooklyn with his single mother, sometimes longs...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Scholastic Paperbacks $5.99 (160p) ISBN 978-0-590-45881-8
When his mother explains that she is gay and in love with a white woman, an African American teenager must come to terms. In a starred review, PW found the novel ""perceptively wrought... [Woodson] shatters stereotypes even as she evokes the...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers $15.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-385-32308-6
Rendered as eloquently as I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, this sequel follows 13-year-old Lena and her precocious little sister, Dion, as they run away from their sexually abusive father. Lena plans to take Dion to Pine Mountain, Ky., the...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Puffin $5.99 (133p) ISBN 978-0-698-11916-1
Seventh-grader Lafayette fears that he will become separated from his two brothers after the death of their mother. "Viewing household tensions through Lafayette's eyes, readers will come to realize each character's internal conflicts...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers $15.95 (115p) ISBN 978-0-385-32031-3
This sensitive yet gritty novel about incest may be Woodson's ( Between Madison and Palmetto ) strongest work to date. Marie, the eighth-grade narrator, lives in an all-black suburb of Athens, Ohio, with her father; her mother, who has inherited...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers $14.95 (112p) ISBN 978-0-385-32189-1
""Sitting big and silent with all her family's land spread out beyond it,"" Staggerlee Canan's house, once belonging to her famous grandparents, stands as a refuge from the townspeople's gossip about her parents' ""mixed"" marriage. Here the pensive
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Putnam Publishing Group $16.99 (112p) ISBN 978-0-399-23969-4
The daughter of an interracial couple, 14-year-old Staggerlee is already an outsider when she wonders if she is gay, too. PW's starred review called this a ""poignant tale of self-discovery,"" and praised Woodson's ""graceful, poetic"" prose....
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Putnam Publishing Group $17.99 (128p) ISBN 978-0-399-23968-7
Jacqueline Woodson's The Dear One tells of 12-year-old Feni, who is stunned when her mother brings a pregnant teenage friend to stay with them. On the book's publication in 1991, PW wrote, ""Woodson's deep understanding of and concern for the...
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Jacqueline Woodson. Penguin/Paulsen, $16.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-399-25250-1
Fifteen-year-old ex-meth addict Laurel is writing an “elegy to the past” in an attempt to recover her life. After her mother and grandmother die in Hurricane Katrina, Laurel, her father, and her younger brother, Jesse Jr., move from their temporary...
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Jacqueline Woodson. Penguin/Paulsen, $16.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-399-25251-8
Written in verse, Woodson’s collection of childhood memories provides insight into the Newbery Honor author’s perspective of America, “a country caught/ between Black and White,” during the turbulent 1960s. Jacqueline was born in Ohio, but spent...
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Jacqueline Woodson. Amistad, $22.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-06-235998-8
In her first adult novel in 20 years, acclaimed children’s and YA author Woodson (winner of the National Book Award for her last book, Brown Girl Dreaming) combines grit and beauty in a series of stunning vignettes, painting a vivid mural of what it
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Jacqueline Woodson. Penguin/Paulsen, $17.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-399-25252-5
Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming) celebrates all that is essential and good for humanity—compassion, understanding, security, and freedom—in this touching novel about six children with special needs. Sixth-grader Haley and her best friend, Holly, don’t...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Putnam $15.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-399-23114-8
When Toswiah Green's father, witness to a murder, does the right thing by testifying against two fellow police officers, he puts his entire family in danger. Now the Greens have fled for their lives, leaving behind all that is comfortable and...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Putnam Publishing Group $15.99 (144p) ISBN 978-0-399-23113-1
Once again, Woodson (If You Come Softly; From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun) reveals a keen understanding of the adolescent psyche via the narration of a winning seventh-grader. Lafayette, whose mother has recently died, is worried that some day he...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author Speak $17.99 (181p) ISBN 978-0-399-23112-4
Once again, Woodson (I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This) handles delicate, even explosive subject matter with exceptional clarity, surety and depth. In this contemporary story about an interracial romance, she seems to slip effortlessly into the skins...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Putnam $15.99 (112p) ISBN 978-0-399-23115-5
The kinetic energy of the aptly named Locomotion (the nickname of Lonnie Collins Motion) permeates the 60 poems that tell his sad yet hopeful story. Lonnie's first poem sets up a conflict familiar to anyone who has attempted creativity: despite...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Putnam $15.99 (134p) ISBN 978-0-399-24655-5
Following the character introduced in Locomotion, Woodson switches from poetry to letters to show how 12-year-old Lonnie Collins Motion, aka Locomotion, maintains a bond with his younger sister, Lili. He reminds her of their past: “There was...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Putnam/Speak $5.99 (128p) ISBN 978-0-14-250191-7
The daughter of an interracial couple, 14-year-old Staggerlee is already an outsider when she wonders if she is gay, too. PW's starred review called this a "poignant tale of self-discovery," and praised Woodson's "graceful,...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Putnam $15.99 (153p) ISBN 978-0-399-24654-8
As she did in Feathers with the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Woodson here invokes the music of the late rapper Tupac Shakur, whose songs address the inequalities confronting many African-Americans. In 1994, the anonymous narrator is 11, and Tupac has
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Putnam $15.99 (118p) ISBN 978-0-399-23989-2
Looking forward" is the message that runs through Woodson's (The House You Pass on the Way ) novel. Narrator Frannie is fascinated with Emily Dickinson's poem, "Hope is the thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul," and...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author . Puffin $5.99 (100p) ISBN 978-0-14-240149-1
In 60 poems, an orphaned boy explores the various forms of poetry. "Through her hero, the author creates a contagious appreciation for poetry while using the genre as a cathartic means for expressing the young poet's own grief," said...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author , illus. by Hudson Talbott. Putnam $16.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-399-23749-2
This affecting, poetic paper-over-board picture book stands out from the first glance. On the innovative cover, a montage of black-and-white pictures of African-American captives, arranged to resemble a quilt, act as a background to a diamond-shaped
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Jacqueline Woodson, illus. by Rafael López. Penguin/Paulsen, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-24653-1
Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming) imagines being “an only” in the classroom—what it’s like to be the only one with an accent (“No one understands the way words curl from your mouth”), the only one who stayed home during summer vacation (“What good is...
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Jacqueline Woodson, illus. by Sophie Blackall, Putnam, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-23987-8
Mama is pregnant with what soon-to-be sibling Gia refers to as "the ding-dang baby." Among the indignities she suffers: the in utero baby is already copying Gia's love of pecan pie—a culinary obsession that Gia thought she could share with Mama...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author, Sisi Aisha Johnson, Read by , read by Sisi Aisha Johnson. Brillance Audio $19.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-4233-6564-8
The narrator of Woodson's 2008 Newbery Honor title is fascinated with Emily Dickinson's famous couplet “Hope is the thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul.” Frannie grapples with its meaning, especially after a white...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author, James Ransome, Illustrator , illus. by James E. Ransome. Scholastic $15.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-590-40005-3
This poignant picture book chronicles a joyful girl narrator's hard-to-bear anticipation and special preparations for a journey with her grandmother to see her father. Both text and artwork keep the destination a mystery, wisely focusing instead
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Jacqueline Woodson, illus. by James Ransome. Penguin/Paulsen, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-23986-1
Woodson’s (Each Kindness) gentle, unpretentious writing and Ransome’s eloquent artwork breathe life into this story of a close-knit African-American family and their pursuit of a better life. The rope of the title is used over and over, tying...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author, E. B. Lewis, Illustrator , illus. by E.B. Lewis. Putnam $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-23748-5
The creators of The Other Side set this quietly stirring tale during an unspecified wartime (though details in the paintings suggest WWII). Ada Ruth's mother packs her suitcase in the opening full-bleed painting, explaining to her daughter, "
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Jacqueline Woodson, illus. by E.B. Lewis. Penguin/Paulsen, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-24652-4
When a new and clearly impoverished girl named Maya shows up at school (“Her coat was open and the clothes beneath it looked old and ragged”), Chloe and her friends brush off any attempt to befriend her. Even when Maya valiantly—and heartbreakingly—t
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author, E. B. Lewis, Illustrator Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-23116-2
Woodson (If You Come Softly; I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This) lays out her resonant story like a poem, its central metaphor a fence that divides blacks from whites. Lewis's (My Rows and Piles of Coins) evocative watercolors lay bare the...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author, Jon J. Muth, Illustrator , illus. By Jon J Muth. Hyperion/Jump at the Sun $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7868-0620-1
Woodson's (Miracle's Boys) affecting story introduces a boy and girl seemingly abandoned by their mother. "Sometimes my mama went away for a day. Sometimes for a lot of days. That's how it was with our mama," says Johnson. A kind
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author, TBA, Read by, Dule Hill, Read by , read by Dule Hill. Listening Library $18 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8072-0437-5
Currently riding high with a role in TV's The West Wing, actor Hill's hip reputation and powerful performance here are a perfect match for Woodson's affecting novel about three orphaned African-American brothers struggling to stay...
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Jacqueline Woodson, Author, Diane Greenseid, Author, Diane Greenseid, Illustrator Hyperion Books $15.49 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7868-2192-1
Novelist Woodson (I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This) turns to a tale for the younger set with this bouncy story about an annual family picnic. Teeka, the young narrator, accompanies her grandma to the park with a basket of fried chicken and biscuits....
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Jacqueline Woodson. Riverhead, $26 (208p) ISBN 978-0-525-53527-0
Woodson’s beautifully imagined novel (her first novel for adults since 2016’s Another Brooklyn) explores the ways an unplanned pregnancy changes two families. The narrative opens in the spring of 2001, at the coming-of-age party that 16-year-old...
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Jacqueline Woodson. Penguin/Paulsen, $17.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-399-54543-6
National Book Award winner Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming) provides a beautiful and heart-wrenching story in her latest middle grade novel. Twelve-year-old Zachariah "ZJ" Johnson Jr.'s pro-football player father has always been hailed as an American...
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Jacqueline Woodson. Penguin/Paulsen, $18.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-399-54546-7
Black 11-year-old Sage, a Bushwick native, questions the meaning of memory and struggles with self-image as houses begin mysteriously burning down throughout her neighborhood, newly dubbed “The Matchbox.” After Sage’s firefighter father dies in the...
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Jacqueline Woodson, illus. by Leo Espinosa. Penguin/Paulsen, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-54549-8
Written from within a community of friends, in a voice that often uses “we,” lilting, intimate-feeling lines by Woodson (The Year We Learned to Fly) capture a delicious sense of autonomy and possibility shared “In Brooklyn/ in the summer/ not so...
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Jacqueline Woodson, illus. by Rafael López. Penguin/Paulsen, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-54553-5
Two Black siblings use their imaginations to escape their immediate surroundings throughout the seasons in this picture book by previous collaborators Woodson and López (The Day You Begin). During “the spring when the rain seemed like it/ would...
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Edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. Avid Reader, $27 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5011-9040-7
Husband and wife Chabon (Moonglow) and Waldman (A Really Good Day) gather dozens of prominent writers to commemorate the ACLU’s centennial with powerful, inspiring essays on the legal organization’s milestone cases. Addressing City of Chicago v....
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ARTICLES
  • Q & A with Jacqueline Woodson
  • Just Announced: 'Remember Us' by Jacqueline Woodson
  • U.S. Book Show 2023: Jacqueline Woodson
  • U.S. Book Show 2023: Jacqueline Woodson
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