Brown Girl Dreaming

I have read and enjoyed a couple of Jacqueline Woodson's book in the past so was immediately drawn to this one. I thought my daughter would enjoy this one but thought it was one we would read together as I suspected a memoir told in verse might be too much for her to read independently at almost nine. I was wrong. I downloaded this book for her the other night when she was going to bed as she wanted to try it. I snuck into her room a couple of hours later to retrieve my kindle and she sat up in bed and deplored me not to take it away, she was almost finished and she wouldn't be able to sleep unless she did. Despite it being a school night, I left her too it, remembering that feeling as a child when you find a book that completely enthralls you, how could I not.

She absolutely loved this memoir of Woodson growing up in South Carolina and New York in the 1960's and 70s looking for her place in the world and how her writing helped her find it. Her love of stories and writing really resonated with my daughter. My daughter has learned a little about the Civil Rights Movement in school and through other books and she loved reading about it from a child's perspective at that time. She asked to google and has been reading more over the last two days since reding Brown Girl Dreaming.

The language and verse is really accessible and made for a very different read to the books she usually consumes, she loved it. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this one, I have only read the first pages and it is one I will buy in paperback for our shelves and buy as gifts. My daughter has not stopped talking about it and I can see the impact this book had on her.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and to author for writing.

Engrossing memoir of Afro-American youth in verse living through momentous times.

Living in the UK, I hadn't heard of this title, but could see it's widely acclaimed over in America and knew it would be something very worthwhile to spend time with.

And it was. A memoir of a childhood, told in verse that does make it feel like a child's voice and perspective, Jacqueline shows us so many sides of America in the era of civil rights and Jim Crow, moving from Ohio to South Carolina dn finally to New York, she and her siblings experienced many different faces of a changing society.

Ending before she even reaches adolescence, readers watch her single mother raise four children by accepting the help of grandparents, we see the family still preferring to move to the back of a bus in certain areas of the country, we see siblings succeeding in school and a future writer finding a love of words and a direction even at a young age.

It was poignant and illuminating. And definitely a read for those even outside of America.

For ages 9-14.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

I’m so excited that Brown Girl Dreaming is finally receiving a UK publication and getting the attention it deserves across the pond!

Written in verse, Woodson’s poetic autobiographical account of her childhood takes us on a lyrical journey across time, space and place in a United States in the grip of the Civil Rights Movement. An African-American girl born in 1963, her story incorporates her lived experiences of segregation and racism in the South Carolina of her maternal grandparents, but also of community, togetherness and love, which permeated her youth and allowed her emergent passion for writing to flourish.

The book is such an intimate and joyous account of Woodson's young years that the reader comes to cherish her family just as much as she evidently does. The descriptions of her life with her grandmother, her grandfather “Daddy”, and her siblings in Nicholtown, Greenville, were so visceral and stirringly beautiful that you feel present on the dusty red-earthed streets, or on the swing-set in the garden amongst the fruit and vegetable patches, or at Daddy’s bedside as he slowly coughs his life away.

The book is marketed towards young adults, but it has such a sense of maturity and a gravity about it that I believe all generations will thoroughly enjoy it.

Brown Girl Dreaming was on my TBR list after hearing such positive reviews from readers in the US and it was everything I'd hoped for and more.

It’s an autobiographical verse novel about Jacqueline’s childhood in Ohio, South Carolina and New York. In many ways, this seemed a world away from my life in Scotland as she described the heat and the food and the ways her proud and intelligent family found to navigate racism and segregation. This window into a different life was what drew me to Brown Girl Dreaming but in the end my favourite aspects of the book were points of commonality. She brilliantly describes a childhood friendship that develops into a lifelong bond and the experience of feeling an overwhelming love from her grandparents. Her beautiful descriptions of the power of stories and good teachers and the magic of learning to read and write will also resonate with other readers from all parts of the world.

I’d highly recommend this to everyone and especially if you enjoy rich and evocative verse or YA novels such as The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, Moonrise by Sarah Crossan or Pride by Ibi Zoboi.