Special Collections

Each Kindness

Each kindness makes the world a little better. Chloe and her friends won't play with the new girl, Maya.

Maya is different--she wears hand-me-downs and plays with old-fashioned toys.

Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her gang, they reject her.

Eventually, Maya plays alone, and then stops coming to school altogether.

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.

This unforgettable book is written and illustrated by the award-winning team that created The Other Side and the Caldecott Honor winner Coming On Home Soon.

With its powerful message and striking art, it will resonate with readers long after they've put it down.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Harbor Me

Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

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.

A New York Times Bestseller

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Pecan Pie Baby

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?

Date Added: 10/14/2019

After Tupac and D Foster

D Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died.

The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend's lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another side of life that includes loss, foster families and an amount of freedom that makes the girls envious. Although all of them are crazy about Tupac Shakur's rap music, D is the one who truly understands the place where he's coming from, and through knowing D, Tupac's lyrics become more personal for all of them. The girls are thirteen when D's mom swoops in to reclaim D--and as magically as she appeared, she now disappears from their lives. Tupac is gone, too, after another shooting; this time fatal. As the narrator looks back, she sees lives suspended in time, and realizes that even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.

A Discussion Guide to After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson .

Newbery Honor book

Date Added: 10/14/2019

The Other Side

Clover wonders why a fence separates the black side of town from the white side. When Annie, a white girl from the other side, begins to sit on the fence, Clover grows more curious as to why the fence is there.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

The House You Pass On The Way

A lyrical coming-of-age story from a three-time Newbery Honor winning authorThirteen-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.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Miracle's Boys

From a three-time Newbery Honor author, a novel that was awarded the 2001 Coretta Scott King award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

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.

Winner of the Coretta Scott King Medal

Date Added: 10/14/2019

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This

RL 4.4 Twelve-year-old Marie is a leader among the popular black girls in Chauncey, Ohio. She isn't looking for a friend when Lena Bright, a white girl, appears in school. Yet they are drawn together 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.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Hush

A powerfully moving novel from a three-time Newbery Honor-winning authorEvie 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.Jacqueline Woodson weaves a fascinating portrait of a thoughtful young girl's coming of age in a world turned upside downA National Book Award Finalist

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Beneath a Meth Moon

Laurel Daneau has moved on to a new life, in a new town, but inside she's still reeling from the loss of her beloved mother and grandmother after Hurricane Katrina washed away their home. Laurel's new life is going well, with a new best friend, a place on the cheerleading squad and T-Boom, co-captain of the basketball team, for a boyfriend. Yet Laurel is haunted by voices and memories from her past. When T-Boom introduces Laurel to meth, she immediately falls under its spell, loving the way it erases, even if only briefly, her past. But as she becomes alienated from her friends and family, she becomes a shell of her former self, and longs to be whole again. With help from an artist named Moses and her friend Kaylee, she's able to begin to rewrite her story and start to move on from her addiction. Incorporating Laurel's bittersweet memories of life before and during the hurricane, this is a stunning novel by one of our finest writers. Jacqueline Woodson's haunting - but ultimately hopeful - story is beautifully told and one readers will not want to miss.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

The Dear One

An intriguing look at teen pregnancy from a three-time Newbery Honor winning authorFeni 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...

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Lena

Thirteen-year-old Lena and her younger sister, Dion, mourn the death of their mother as they hitchhike from Ohio to Kentucky while running away from their abusive father.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Behind You

A moving story of love and loss from a three-time Newbery winning authorYou 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. . . .Miah and Ellie were in love. Even though Miah was black and Ellie was white, they made sense together. Then Miah was killed. This was the ending.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&150unable 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.This beautiful sequel to Jacqueline Woodson's If You Come Softly explores the experiences of those left behind after tragedy. It is a novel in which through hope, understanding and love, healing begins.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

If You Come Softly

A lyrical story of star-crossed love perfect for readers of The Hate U Give, by National Ambassador for Children’s Literature Jacqueline Woodson--now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and including a new preface by the authorJeremiah 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. Jacqueline Woodson's work has been called “moving and resonant” (Wall Street Journal) and “gorgeous” (Vanity Fair). If You Come Softly is a powerful story of interracial love that leaves readers wondering "why" and "if only . . ."

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Sweet, Sweet Memory

A child and her grandmother feel sad when Grandpa dies, but as time passes, funny memories of him make them laugh and feel better.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Let's Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and His Birthday

Describes the life of the civil rights worker who is honored on Martin Luther King Day.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Last Summer With Maizon

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. . . . "Ms. Woodson writes with a sure understanding of the thoughts of young people, offering a poetic, eloquent narrative that is not simply a story of nearly adolescent children, but a mature exploration of grown-up issues: death, racism, independence, the nurturing of the gifted black child and, most important, self-discovery."(The New York Times)

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Show Way

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.

Newbery Medal Honor book

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Visiting Day

As a little girl and her grandmother get ready for visiting day, her father, who adores her, is getting ready, too. The community of families who take the long bus ride upstate to visit loved ones share hope and give comfort to each other in this heartwarming story about unconditional love.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

Three-time Newbery Honor author Jacqualine Woodson explores race and sexuality through the eyes of a compelling narratorMelanin 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?

Date Added: 10/14/2019

The Book Chase

The Ghostwriters look for clues as to what is hidden in an old book that is more valuable than gold to the Jenkins family, and who stole the book at the family reunion.

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Between Madison and Palmetto

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... "Woodson's candid assessments of relations between blacks and whites are as searching as ever, and her characters just as commanding." (Publishers Weekly)

Date Added: 10/14/2019

We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past

Teeka's family had a picnic this Sunday past. Everyone was there, from mean old cousin Terrance who put fake flies on the sweet corn to Bible-toting Reverend Luke to Auntie Kim (Teeka's all-time favorite).

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Maizon at Blue Hill

Maizon takes the biggest step in her life when she accepts a scholarship to boarding school and says good-bye to her grandmother and her best friend, Margaret. Blue Hill is beautiful, and challenging-but there are only five black students, and the other four are from wealthy families. Does Maizon belong at Blue Hill after all?

Date Added: 10/14/2019

Peace, Locomotion

The stunning companion to the National Book Award finalist--from a three-time Newbery Honor winning author.

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.

Date Added: 09/17/2019