From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 21:25:32 -0500

I think KT's adjectives--grace and honesty--are the perfect ones for Jacqueline Woodson's writing. I would add spare and poetic, too. I read her novels for the beauty of the language, her ability to say so much and to have so many layers of meaning in such clean, artful prose, and the way she is able to get inside the minds and hearts of her characters. Feathers is a case in point. My copy has my notes scribbled all over--flow charts, cross references, lists of images--and every time I read it I am floored by the beauty of the telling. Woodson says she wrote Feathers to explore "the many ways people find hope in the world." She explores hope, identity, home, family, religion, mortality, and death--big themes for a small book, and she captures the time, the early 1970s, with subtle details. I'll be reading this to my 7th graders this coming school year, and have even woven a unit around her theme: books that explore the many ways characters find hope, a great way to counter students (and parents) who claim th e books we read are always so sad.
  I read Miracle's Boys with my eighth graders. The characterizations are strong in this novel of three brothers trying to survive and move forward with their lives after the deaths of their parents. I pair Miracle's Boys with Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, because I see a connection between Ty'ree in Miracle's Boys and George Milton in Of Mice and Men, characters who give up dreams in order to do the right thing and care for someone else. We'll follow the two books with an author study, in which students will be able to choose among Woodson's other novels, and we'll host an author visit to top it all off.
  After Tupac & D Foster, like Feathers, is a novel strong in its sense of place and its theme of home and belonging. The neighborhood seems as much a character as Neeka and her friends. I love the irony that the narrator and Neeka envy D's freedom, but all D wants is to belong someplace. (I hope that's a correct memory, I read the book several months ago.)
  I could go on and on about various books, but I'll jump in later when the discussion gets rolling. I have an interview with Jacqueline Woodson and an article about Miracle's Boys in the current (May 2008) issue of Book Links magazine. I hope some of you will find your way to it! I'm happy that the interview captured how upbeat, friendly, and life-affirming the author is.
  Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, Tennessee schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Wed 04 Jun 2008 09:25:32 PM CDT