Virtual Author Visit with Jacqueline Woodson
March 30, 2021
7:00 PM – Families
7:45 PM – Adults
Register for the program and join at your desired time.
Please join us on Tuesday, March 30 for an enlightening conversation with award winning author Jacqueline Woodson, this year’s honored guest for our biennial community program, One Author New Canaan. Ms. Woodson’s talk concludes a month-long exploration of her vast body of work and the different themes that are interwoven in her books, skillfully and sensitively addressing the complexity and diversity of the world we live in now, in genres and formats that range from picture books for children to novels for adults, from fiction to memoir.
About Jacqueline Woodson
JACQUELINE WOODSON is the critically-acclaimed author of more than two dozen award-winning books for adults, young adults, middle graders, and children, including New York Times bestsellers Red at the Bone and Brown Girl Dreaming. Her adult novel Another Brooklyn was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award in Fiction. Among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist including a 2014 National Book Award for Young People's Literature win for Brown Girl Dreaming, and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. She was named the 2015 Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation, the 2018 Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress, and was selected for the 2020 MacArthur Genius fellowship. Woodson was also the 2020 recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition given to an author or illustrator of children’s books.
Programs Inspired by Jacqueline Woodson's Works
Click on a program icon to learn more and register
Telling Stories through Architecture
March 3
How We Say Goodbye: Funerary Traditions Around the World
March 8
Kindness Kits Pick Up
March 8-13
Concussions and Brain Injuries
March 15
Brooklyn in the 1970s
March 16
Understanding the Tulsa Massacre
March 18
Build Each Other Up
March 24
Pizza and Pages Book Discussion
March 3
Write (or Draw!) a Feeling Workshop
March 10
Little Bookworms: Book Group
March 17
Before the Ever After Book Discussion
March 18
Booked Solid Podcast: Another Brooklyn
March 19
Book Discussion: Another Brooklyn & Red at the Bone
March 23
Love of Literacy
March 23
Young Critics Book Group
March 23
Works by Jacqueline Woodson
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Red at The Bone (2019)
Jacqueline Woodson
Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson's taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history.
Available Formats
Another Brooklyn (2016)
Jacqueline Woodson
Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.
But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.
Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.
Available Formats
Brown Girl Dreaming (2014)
Jacqueline Woodson
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.
Available Formats
Harbor Me (2018)
Jacqueline Woodson
It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat–by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for “A Room to Talk”), they discover it’s safe to talk about what’s bothering them–everything from Esteban’s father’s deportation and Haley’s father’s incarceration to Amari’s fears of racial profiling and Ashton’s adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.
Available Formats
Before The Ever After (2020)
Jacqueline Woodson
For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone’s hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he’s as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ’s house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and seems to be angry all the time. ZJ’s mom explains it’s because of all the head injuries his dad sustained during his career. ZJ can understand that–but it doesn’t make the sting any less real when his own father forgets his name. As ZJ contemplates his new reality, he has to figure out how to hold on tight to family traditions and recollections of the glory days, all the while wondering what their past amounts to if his father can’t remember it. And most importantly, can those happy feelings ever be reclaimed when they are all so busy aching for the past?
Available Formats
Feathers (2007)
Jacqueline Woodson
“Hope is the thing with feathers” starts the poem Frannie is reading in school. Frannie hasn’t thought much about hope. There are so many other things to think about. Each day, her friend Samantha seems a bit more “holy.” There is a new boy in class everyone is calling the Jesus Boy. And although the new boy looks like a white kid, he says he’s not white. Who is he?
“During a winter full of surprises, good and bad, Frannie starts seeing a lot of things in a new light—her brother Sean’s deafness, her mother’s fear, the class bully’s anger, her best friend’s faith and her own desire for “the thing with feathers.”
Available Formats
Hush (2002)
Jacqueline Woodson
Evie Thomas is not who she used to be. Once she had a best friend, a happy home and a loving grandmother living nearby. Once her name was Toswiah.
Now, everything is different. Her family has been forced to move to a new place and change their identities. But that’s not all that has changed. Her once lively father has become depressed and quiet. Her mother leaves teaching behind and clings to a new-found religion. Her only sister is making secret plans to leave.
And Evie, struggling to find her way in a new city where kids aren’t friendly and the terrain is as unfamiliar as her name, wonders who she is.
Available Formats
The House You Pass on the Way (1997)
Jacqueline Woodson
Thirteen-year-old Staggerlee used to be called Evangeline, but she took on a fiercer name. She’s always been different–set apart by the tragic deaths of her grandparents in an anti-civil rights bombing, by her parents’ interracial marriage, and by her family’s retreat from the world. This summer she has a new reason to feel set apart–her confused longing for her friend Hazel. When cousin Trout comes to stay, she gives Staggerlee a first glimpse of her possible future selves and the world beyond childhood.
Available Formats
After Tupac and D Foster (2008)
Jacqueline Woodson
The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend’s lives, the world opens up for them. Suddenly they’re keenly aware of things beyond their block in Queens, things that are happening in the world—like the shooting of Tupac Shakur—and in search of their Big Purpose in life. When—all too soon—D’s mom swoops in to reclaim her, and Tupac dies, they are left with a sense of how quickly things can change and how even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.
Available Formats
Beneath a Meth Moon (2012)
Jacqueline Woodson
Hurricane Katrina took her mother and granmother. And even though Laurel Daneau has moves on to a new life—one that includes a new best friend, a spot on the cheerleading squad, and dating the co-captain of the football team—she can't get past the pain of that loss. Then her new boyfriend introduces her to meth, and Laurel is instantly seduced by its spell, the way it erases, even if only temporarily, her memories. Soon Laurel is completely hooked, a shell of her former self, desperate to be whole again, but lacking the strength to break free. But with the help of a new friend—and the loyalty of an old one—she is able to rewrite her own story and move on with her own life.
Dreamlike in quality and weaving flashbacks to the hurricane in with Laurel's present-day struggles, this is a stunning novel that readers won't want to miss.
Available Formats
Between Madison and Palmetto (1993)
Jacqueline Woodson
Margaret and Maizon are back together on Madison Street, but their friendship is different now. Margaret needs more time alone, and it’s not just the two of them any more-their new neighbor and classmate, Caroline, has become part of their lives. But that seems minor next to what is about to happen to Maizon. . . .
Available Formats
Last Summer with Maizon (1990)
Jacqueline Woodson
Margaret loves her parents and hanging out with her best friend, Maizon. Then it happens, like a one-two punch, during the summer she turns eleven: first, Margaret’s father dies of a heart attack, and then Maizon is accepted at an expensive boarding school, far away from the city they call home. For the first time in her life, Margaret has to turn to someone who isn’t Maizon, who doesn’t know her heart and her dreams. . . .
Available Formats
Locomotion (2010)
Jacqueline Woodson
When Lonnie was seven years old, his parents died in a fire. Now he’s eleven, and he still misses them terribly. And he misses his little sister, Lili, who was put into a different foster home because “not a lot of people want boys-not foster boys that ain’t babies.” But Lonnie hasn’t given up. His foster mother, Miss Edna, is growing on him. She’s already raised two sons and she seems to know what makes them tick. And his teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper.
Told entirely through Lonnie’s poetry, we see his heartbreak over his lost family, his thoughtful perspective on the world around him, and most of all his love for Lili and his determination to one day put at least half of their family back together.
Available Formats
Peace Locomotion (2009)
Jacqueline Woodson
Twelve-year-old Lonnie is finally feeling at home with his foster family. But because he’s living apart from his little sister, Lili, he decides it’s his job to be the “rememberer”—and write down everything that happens while they’re growing up. Lonnie’s musings are bittersweet; he’s happy that he and Lili have new families, but though his new family brings him joy, it also brings new worries. With a foster brother in the army, concepts like Peace have new meaning for Lonnie.Told through letters from Lonnie to Lili, this thought-provoking companion to Jacqueline Woodson’s National Book Award finalist Locomotion tackles important issues in captivating, lyrical language. Lonnie’s reflections on family, loss, love and peace will strike a note with readers of all ages.
Available Formats
Behind You (2004)
Jacqueline Woodson
You are so light you move with the wind and the snow. . . . And it lifts you up-over a world of sadness and anger and fear. Over a world of first kisses and hands touching and someone you're falling in love with. She's there now. Right there. . . .
And it was the beginning of grief for the many people who loved Miah. Now his mother has stopped trying, his friends are lost and Ellie doesn't know how to move on. And there is Miah, watching all of this—unable to let go.
How do we go on after losing someone we love? This is the question the living and the dead are asking. With the help of each other, the living will come together. Miah will sit beside them. They will feel Miah in the wind, see him in the light, hear him in their music. And Miah will watch over them, until he is sure each of those he loved is all right.
Available Formats
If You Come Softly (1998)
Jacqueline Woodson
Jeremiah feels good inside his own skin. That is, when he's in his own Brooklyn neighborhood. But now he's going to be attending a fancy prep school in Manhattan, and black teenage boys don't exactly fit in there. So it's a surprise when he meets Ellie the first week of school. In one frozen moment their eyes lock, and after that they know they fit together--even though she's Jewish and he's black. Their worlds are so different, but to them that's not what matters. Too bad the rest of the world has to get in their way.
Available Formats
Miracle's Boys (2000)
Jacqueline Woodson
For Lafayette and his brothers, the challenges of growing up in New York City are compounded by the facts that they've lost their parents and it's up to eldest brother Ty'ree to support the boys, and middle brother Charlie has just returned home from a correctional facility.
Lafayette loves his brothers and would do anything if they could face the world as a team. But even though Ty'ree cares, he's just so busy with work and responsibility. And Charlie's changed so much that his former affection for his little brother has turned to open hostility.
Now, as Lafayette approaches 13, he needs the guidance and answers only his brothers can give him. The events of one dramatic weekend force the boys to make the choice to be there for each other—to really see each other—or to give in to the pain and problems of every day.
Available Formats
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (1995)
Jacqueline Woodson
Melanin Sun has a lot to say. But sometimes it’s hard to speak his mind, so he fills up notebooks with his thoughts instead. He writes about his mom a lot–they’re about as close as they can be, because they have no other family. So when she suddenly tells him she’s gay, his world is turned upside down. And if that weren’t hard enough for him to accept, her girlfriend is white. Melanin Sun is angry and scared. How can his mom do this to him– is this the end of their closeness? What will his friends think? And can he let her girlfriend be part of their family?
Available Formats
I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This (1994)
Jacqueline Woodson
Twelve-year-old Marie is a leader among the popular black girls in Chauncey, Ohio, a prosperous black suburb. She isn’t looking for a friend when Lena Bright, a white girl, appears in school. Yet they are drawn to each other because both have lost their mothers. And they know how to keep a secret. For Lena has a secret that is terrifying, and she’s desperate to protect herself and her younger sister from their father. Marie must decide whether she can help Lena by keeping her secret… or by telling it.
Available Formats
Lena (1999)
Jacqueline Woodson
At the end of I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, Lena and her younger sister, Dion, set off on their own, desperate to escape their abusive father. Disguised as boys, they hitchhike along, traveling in search of their mother's relatives. They don't know what they will find, or who they can trust along the way, but they do know that they can't afford to make even one single mistake. Dramatic and moving, this is a heart-wrenching story of two young girls in search of a place to call home.
Available Formats
The Dear One (1990)
Jacqueline Woodson
Feni is furious when she finds out that her mother has agreed to take a fifteen-year-old pregnant girl into their home until her baby is born. What kind of girl would let herself get into so much trouble? How can Feni live under the same roof as someone like that? Her worst fears are confirmed when Rebecca arrives: she is mean, bossy, and uneducated. Feni decided she will have nothing to do with her. But it’s hard not to be curious about a girl so close to her own age who seems so different…
Available Formats
The Day You Begin (2018)
Jacqueline Woodson
There will be times when you walk into a room
and no one there is quite like you.
There are many reasons to feel different. Maybe it’s how you look or talk, or where you’re from; maybe it’s what you eat, or something just as random. It’s not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it.
Available Formats
This Is the Rope (2013)
Jacqueline Woodson
During the time of the Great Migration, millions of African American families relocated from the South, seeking better opportunities. The story of one family’s journey north during the Great Migration starts with a little girl in South Carolina who finds a rope under a tree one summer. She has no idea the rope will become part of her family’s history. But for three generations, that rope is passed down, used for everything from jump rope games to tying suitcases onto a car for the big move north to New York City, and even for a family reunion where that first little girl is now a grandmother.
Available Formats
Each Kindness (2012)
Jacqueline Woodson
Each kindness makes the world a little better.
Chloe and her friends won’t play with the new girl, Maya. Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her friends, they reject her. Eventually Maya stops coming to school. When Chloe’s teacher gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world, Chloe is stung by the lost opportunity for friendship, and thinks about how much better it could have been if she’d shown a little kindness toward Maya.
Available Formats
Pecan Pie Baby (2013)
Jacqueline Woodson
All anyone wants to talk about with Mama is the new “ding-dang baby” that’s on the way, and Gia is getting sick of it! If her new sibling is already such a big deal, what’s going to happen to Gia’s nice, cozy life with Mama once the baby is born?
Available Formats
Show Way (2005)
Jacqueline Woodson
Soonie’s great-grandma was just seven years old when she was sold to a big plantation without her ma and pa, and with only some fabric and needles to call her own. She pieced together bright patches with names like North Star and Crossroads, patches with secret meanings made into quilts called Show Ways — maps for slaves to follow to freedom. When she grew up and had a little girl, she passed on this knowledge. And generations later, Soonie — who was born free — taught her own daughter how to sew beautiful quilts to be sold at market and how to read.
From slavery to freedom, through segregation, freedom marches and the fight for literacy, the tradition they called Show Way has been passed down by the women in Jacqueline Woodson’s family as a way to remember the past and celebrate the possibilities of the future. Beautifully rendered in Hudson Talbott’s luminous art, this moving, lyrical account pays tribute to women whose strength and knowledge illuminate their daughters’ lives.
Available Formats
Coming on Home Soon (2004)
Jacqueline Woodson
Ada Ruth’s mama must go away to Chicago to work, leaving Ada Ruth and Grandma behind. It’s war time, and women are needed to fill the men’s jobs. As winter sets in, Ada Ruth and her grandma keep up their daily routine, missing Mama all the time. They find strength in each other, and a stray kitten even arrives one day to keep them company, but nothing can fill the hole Mama left. Every day they wait, watching for the letter that says Mama will be coming on home soon. Set during World War II, Coming On Home Soon has a timeless quality that will appeal to all who wait and hope.
Available Formats
Visiting Day (2002)
Jacqueline Woodson
In this moving picture book from multi-award winning author Jacqueline Woodson, a young girl and her grandmother prepare for a very special day–the one day a month they get to visit the girl’s father in prison. “Only on visiting day is there chicken frying in the kitchen at 6 a.m, and Grandma in her Sunday dress, humming soft and low.” As the little girl and her grandmother get ready, her father, who adores her, is getting ready, too, and readers get to join the community of families who make the trip together, as well as the triumphant reunion between father and child, all told in Woodson’s trademark lyrical style, and beautifully illusrtrated by James Ransome.
Available Formats
The Other Side (2001)
Jacqueline Woodson
Clover’s mom says it isn’t safe to cross the fence that segregates their African-American side of town from the white side where Anna lives. But the two girls strike up a friendship, and get around the grown-ups’ rules by sitting on top of the fence together.
With the addition of a brand-new author’s note, this special edition celebrates the tenth anniversary of this classic book. As always, Woodson moves readers with her lyrical narrative, and E. B. Lewis’s amazing talent shines in his gorgeous watercolor illustrations.
Available Formats
About OANC
A Community Read and Discussion
ONE AUTHOR NEW CANAAN is a biennial library program that brings our community together through shared story, events, and experiences. This year, instead of One Book, we are encouraging community members of all ages to read the works of Jacqueline Woodson, whose award-winning writing for adults, teens, and children earned her a 2020 MacArthur Genius Fellowship.
For more information on this Speaker please visit prhspeakers.com
