19 April 2014 BROWN GIRL DREAMING by Jacqueline Woodson, Nancy Paulsen Books, August 2014, 336p., ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8

"One child grows up to be

Somebody that just loves to learn

And another child grows up to be

Somebody you'd just love to burn"

-- Sly and the Family Stone, "Family Affair"

Jacqueline Woodson, writing about being a young child in South Carolina:

"ghosts

In downtown Greenville,

they painted over the WHITE ONLY signs,

except on the bathroom doors,

they didn't use a lot of paint

so you can still see the words, right there

like a ghost standing in front

still keeping you out."

Over the past week or so, I've been reading BROWN GIRL DREAMING to myself, and then re-reading many of the pieces aloud to my young grandson and to my partner.  This memoir in poems is just begging to be read aloud.

When reading a new book, I dog-ear pages I want to later share or reread or talk about.  There are so many great pieces to this story, and I have dog-eared BROWN GIRL DREAMING in dozens of places.

BROWN GIRL DREAMING is Jacqueline Woodson's soon-to-be-published memoir about her childhood in South Carolina and New York City.  The story draws me in for so many reasons: It is written as prose poetry.  It is nonfiction.  It is a story very much connected to the Civil Rights movement.  Having myself been a child of those times, the story moves me.  Having been a child of New York, it moves me.  Being such a fan of Ms. Woodson and of her past work, it moves me.

Above all, it is such a lyrically-written and memorable tale.

Jacqueline Woodson, writing about being a middle grader in Brooklyn:

"trading places

When Maria's mother makes arroz con habichuelas and tostones,

we trade dinners.  If it's a school night,

I'll run to Maria's house, a plate of my mother's baked chicken

with Kraft mac and cheese,

sometimes box corn bread,

sometimes canned string beans,

warm in my hands, ready for the first taste

of Maria's mother's garlicky rice and beans, crushed green bananas

fried and salted and warm...

Maria will be waiting, her own plate covered in foil.  Sometimes

we sit side by side on her stoop, our traded plates in our laps.

What are you guys eating? the neighborhood kids ask

but we never answer, too busy shoveling the food we love

into our mouths.

Your mother makes the best chicken, Maria says.  The best

corn bread.  The best everything!

Yeah, I say.  I guess my grandma taught her something after all."

BROWN GIRL DREAMING features family and friends and teachers, along with timeless and universal topics of childhood to which most any child will relate.  There are pieces about grandparents, neighbors, parents, schoolmates, playing games, and popular music.  These are interspersed with other pieces that so powerfully and poignantly bring the Civil Rights Movement to focus through the eyes of a child on a level that young readers will readily be able to understand.

One more important and recurring topic that Ms. Woodson writes about in BROWN GIRL DREAMING is her growth in becoming a storyteller (beginning as a preschooler) and a writer, this despite not being the star student that her sister was. (There was a super-smart, just-older sister in whose wake Jackie had to follow.) 

I really loved reading pieces here that show me the same wonder and joy in the young Jacqueline Woodson that I recall from characters of hers that I've gotten to know over the years.

I can't wait to hear Jackie reading aloud from BROWN GIRL DREAMING during the planned fall book tour.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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