Jacqueline Woodson

"Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. 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...

Two girls, one white and one black, gradually get to know each other as they sit on the fence that divides their town.

ZJ's friends Ollie, Darry and Daniel help him cope when his father, a beloved professional football player, suffers severe headaches and memory loss that spell the end of his career.

A rope passed down through the generations frames an African American family's story as they journey north during the time of the Great Migration.

Lena and her younger sister Dion feel they have no other choice but to leave their home and take to the open road. Their mother is dead, and their father has done terrible things to the girls. They know from experience that if they're put into foster homes, they will be separated. And all they really have is each other. So the girls head out, with only a vague plan of finding their mama's people. Life on the road is full of danger, but Lena knows...

Other students laugh when Rigoberto, an immigrant from Venezuela, introduces himself but later, he meets Angelina and discovers that he is not the only one who feels like an outsider. There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you. There are lots of 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. Whatever it is, it's not easy to...

"Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. 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,...

"By heeding their wise grandmother's advice, a brother and sister discover the ability to lift themselves up and imagine a better world"--

In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.

"When six students are chosen to participate in a weekly talk with no adults allowed, they discover that when they're together, it's safe to share the hopes and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world"--