About the book: Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of her childhood from her perspective during the Civil Rights movement. She tells about her time in Ohio, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York. Her mother moves the her and her siblings to South Carolina to live with her grandparents. While living with her grandparents she is brought up in the Jehovah Witness faith. She has a special relationship with her grandfather. Her mother leaves the kids and sets out to make them a life in New York. When her mother returns to take the kids to New York, Jacqueline is excited to be with her mother again but nervous about the change. Her mother has another baby and he becomes ill from eating lead paint. She tries to understand the ways of the world around her. Throughout the book you learn that she always wanted to be a writer of poetry, even though learning how to read was a struggle for her. She has written the book in poetic verse, which provides a different twist on the Biography format which tells the story in a fast passed entertaining way.
Readers Response: Brown Girl Dreaming is a unique book. The book can be used to reflect on history during the civil rights movement. The books is also written in poetic verse which can make it very useful during poetry units. The amount of culture that is shared in this book which includes single parents, living with grandparents without a parent, poverty, religion affiliation (Jehovah's Witness), strong African American female all lends this book to being a great book that could be recommended to YA to help in creating a lifetime reader through developing the stage of reading autobiographically.
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