Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

"I am born on a Tuesday at University Hospital Columbus Ohio, USA -

A country caught between Black and White."

So begins this beautifully crafted poetic memoir, intended for the juvenile fiction shelf, but perfect for adult readers.  Woodson traces her early years in Ohio, to her stable life in South Carolina with loving grandparents, to her Brooklyn home with new challenges and freedoms; and her words draw us in to smell, hear and taste the different places she has lived and learned.

Early in the book as her mother moves as directed to the back of the bus with her three children, "her hand moves gently over my brother's warm head.  He is three years old, his eyes open to the world, his too-big ears already listening.  We're as good as anybody, my mother whispers.  As good as anybody." Although Woodson's theme isn't racism, this memoir definitely touches on it because it's the '60's.  Rather the theme running throughout is that Jackie can become "as good as anybody" in her dream of writing. 

The young Jackie loves words, stories, family tales, and memorizing but she struggles in school to read; unlike her sister.  After standing before a class and reciting a book called the Selfish Giant, her teacher is astonished and proud, finally seeing the brilliance of this young dreamer.  When her classmates ask her how she memorized the whole book Jackie thinks, "How can I explain to anyone that stories are like air to me, I breathe them in and let them out over and over again."

Brown Girl Dreaming received the Newberry Honor Book award as well as the Coretta Scott King Award.  Moving. Captivating. Creative artistry.