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Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

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Publishing April 2nd 2020 (publication deferred)

Told in vivid and emotional poetry, this is the story of a childhood spent between New York and South Carolina, and of never truly feeling at home in either place. Of growing up as an African-American girl in the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. Of discovering the first sparks of an incredible gift for writing, which would last a lifetime. And of one girl’s search for her voice, her identity, and her place in the world.

Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir is the winner of a US National Book Award, a Newbery Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Award.

“The triumph of Brown Girl Dreaming is not just in how well Woodson tells us the story of her life, but in how elegantly she writes words that make us want to hold those carefully crafted poems close, apply them to our lives, reach into the mirror she holds up and make the words and the worlds she explores our own. This is a book full of poems that cry out to be learned by heart. These are poems that will, for years to come, be stored in our bloodstream.” NEW YORK TIMES

Waterstones

Path To The Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist by Sylvia Acevedo

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In her middle-grade memoir Path to the Stars, Sylvia Acevedo draws a straight if improbable line from her childhood as a Mexican American girl in New Mexico through a career as a literal rocket scientist to her current post as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Horn Book

Read this special feature of the author in conversation with Roger Sutton, Horn Book editor.

“This appealing page-turner helps fill the void of biographies on Latina women. Girls, boys, scouts, non- scouts–all will be inspired by Acevedo’s story.”–Booklist, STARRED review

“Those seeking stories of female STEM trailblazers will find much to love here. Encouraging and uplifting.”–Kirkus

Waterstones

MISFIT Launch Event, Waterstones Brighton

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Waterstones

I had to leave this event half-way through audience questions and as I did so someone in the second row became overwhelmed while asking something about abusive relationships. Charli Howard jumped from her seat and gave the woman a warm hug. 

Earlier, sitting between a tremendously engaging Juno Dawson (presenter of the panel) and the effervescent second guest, chef, food presenter and writer Gizzy Ersskine (aka in her schooldays as Jizzy Foreskin we were told) Charli came across as the quieter, least demonstrative of the three. This may have been because it was a Sunday evening and the final event of a gruelling week of promotion and publicity, but I think it more likely that it was an accurate representation of her personality – just a thoroughly nice person not into bigging herself up but willing to let others hold centre stage.

Had I been able to linger longer I’d have asked her about something I noted in my review of her highly-recommended memoir, MISFIT: the curious contrast between the laddish and adventurous adolescence and the apparently servile compliance after she had started modelling.

Juno Dawson, whose highly anticipated YA novel CLEAN is due out in April, was a revelation as a presenter – engaging, wittily impromptu and with just the right mix of humour and seriousness. 

Waterstones

How About: Malala – The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Changed The World

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Malala

When I was young (pre-teen), reading biographies and memoirs of famous and inspiring individuals was commonplace. I had a particular penchant for reading about explorers and adventurers. When I visited the children’s section of the public library there was no shortage of such books. But individual biographical subjects no longer feature so prominently on children’s publishing lists.
The subject of this book has, of course, just been presented with the Nobel Peace Prize. Back in the summer Orion published her memoir on their teenage Indigo list. Although the book has all the appearance of an adult hardback biography (with inset coloured photos) it has been co-written with Patricia McCormick in a manner that makes it eminently accessible to children of older primary age, and would make an excellent present for anyone aged 10+.
It’s thought-provoking and engaging. Malala herself comes across as extraordinarily well-balanced and rounded.
At the end there is a very useful Timeline of Important Events, but also a set of Discussion Notes which give the book an unnecessarily overt educational agenda.

via Malala – The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Changed The World.

Allan Ahlberg – Memories of an Inattentive Childhood

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Excellent feature by Valerie Grove about Allan Ahlberg to coincide with his new book (for adults)
The Bucket: Memories of an Inattentive Childhood

Grove visits Ahlberg at his home in Bath: “Here is Ahlberg opening the door of his handsome house high above Bath, a lean and lofty figure with a thatch of grey hair and a handsome, gentle face. Clean-shaven too I am glad to say (his former beard, like Paxman’s, was not a good look)…”

You’ll need to be a Times subscriber to read the interview online – otherwise buy the paper, just for today:

Ahlberg’s latest book — cover drawing by Jessica — is quite unclassifiable. It’s for adults: a beguiling little gem, 144 pages long, called The Bucket: Memories of an Inattentive Childhood . He calls it a patchwork of poems and prose about his boyhood. Parents will recognise from Peepo! the 1940s background: a back-to-back terraced house in the industrial Midlands, with lavatory in the backyard, wash house with mangle, coalhouse, green velvet tasselled tablecloth and a wooden clotheshorse that becomes a tent.
Growing up in the town of Oldbury with its 79 factory chimneys, Ahlberg was a curious lad who noticed things. The adjective in the title, though, comes from a school report, reproduced in the book, accusing him of being (at 8) “most inattentive and dreamy at times”. He recalls why. Miss Palmer was showing the class a painting of a knight, Millais’ Sir Isumbras at the Ford , and explaining that a ford was a shallow bit of river where you could cross. “So I crossed,” Ahlberg says. “And I was inside that picture. Not in the reality of the classroom.”
His book begins with his adoption as a baby in 1938. His mother struggled by tram and train to fetch him from Battersea, carrying “bootees, bottle, shawl”. As she signed the form her eyes filled with tears. “Brand new mother,” writes Ahlberg, “second-hand child.”

via Allan Ahlberg and his perfect partnerships | The Times.