Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson

Specifics
Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson
Published by Penguin Group, 2014

Target Audience
Lexile level 990L
This book is for older students, probably around middle school age.

Summary
This book is about the younger years of Jacqueline Woodson herself. It is about how her and her family moved from Ohio, to South Carolina, to New York City, and the many differences between all of them. A lot of the differences have to do with the fact that they are black, and this is the 60's and 70's, so not everything is equal for her and her family. Jacqueline sees the differences through a child's eyes, and is retelling the story of her life through things her family has told her and through her own memories, through the eyes of a child. This book is written in poem format, and is actually pretty easy and fun to read.

Evaluation
This book is a great tool for teaching about the civil rights movement that was going on at that time. The characters seemed real, especially because Jacqueline doesn't always understand the reasons for what the adults tell her. The language, for being written in poem form, sounded incredibly natural. I don't usually like poems all that much, but I love the way that Woodson wrote this. The characters mostly fit their settings, especially Jacqueline's grandparents in South Carolina, and how close they were to their grandchildren. The story is realistic, if you keep in mind the fact that most of the very early years are known because of stories from Woodson's other family members. I definitely felt like I was in that time and place with the character of Jacqueline.

Lesson
The lesson for this book will go along with a history unit about the civil rights movement of the 60's. The author's use of allegory throughout the book will be thoroughly discussed. Any uses of assonance will be noted and used as tools for the students to write their own forms of poetry. Metaphors and how they affected this story will be discussed. The students will either do a found poem, like we did with this book in class, or they will write their own form of poem about a memory from their own childhood.