Review: Brown Girl Dreaming, Poetry that Inspires

It’s the last day of National Poetry Month, so I wanted to make sure I reviewed this book.

It’s called Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson. It is an autobiography about, of course, Jacqueline Woodson. The book is all free verse poetry. I never knew you could make a story out of a whole bunch of poems.

Brown Girl Dreaming is about the author’s life — how her dad left the family and how she loves poetry.  It also is about the hardships she faces in her childhood, including being one of the only students growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. Her classmates didn’t understand why she couldn’t go to birthday parties, say the Pledge of Allegiance or do some of the other things they did.

In this book, Jacqueline Woodson is growing up during the Civil Rights Movement. She learns about black people who aren’t afraid to die for what they believed in, heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Angela Davis. There is a poem called Power to the People that explains it.

I liked how the author expressed herself in poetry. I could actually visualize the story really vividly, like I was there. In the book, she writes a lot about how writing. I could imagine everything she says in First Book because it is a poem about how she wrote and stapled together her first book. I guess a lot of people who want to be authors do stuff like that. I remember writing books and stapling them together when I was younger. Brown Girl Dreaming has dozens of poems in it. My  favorites are What I Believe and Each World.

When my friend Christian let me borrow it, I guessed Brown Girl Dreaming would be a good book because it won so many awards, but I was wrong. It was a great book! That’s why I am giving it four out of four roses.

I would recommend this book to people who like Jacqueline Woodson’s other poetry books. If you like diversity books like me, you should definitely read this. It won many awards, including the Newbery Honor Medal,  Coretta Scott King Award and it also is a National Book Award Winner.

I think this book inspires mostly writers, but also anyone who wants to reach their goal. I know it says “brown girl” on the cover, but this is a book for every girl or boy (or adult) who would like to read this book! (My mom is reading this book right now.)

Jacqueline Woodson has also written After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, Locomotion, and many, many others.