Jacqueline Woodson

. [http://dept.kent.edu/virginiahamiltonconf/woodson.htm Jacquelin Woodson] ]

Biography

Jacqueline Woodson was born on February 12, 1963 in Columbus, Ohio but grew up in Greenville, South Carolina and Brooklyn, New York, where she currently resides with her partner and children. She has one brother and two sisters.

While in school she often got in trouble for telling stories until one teacher told her to write her stories down so then they would be fiction and not lies. Her favorite subject in school was English and she loved to do anything where she got to write. Her favorite books as a child were "The Selfish Giant" by Oscar Wilde, "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Anderson and "Stevie" by John Steptoe. Wherever she went in Brooklyn, she was surrounded by African American and Puerto Rican culture, which has often informed her works. As a child, she never saw books about African American girls, deaf children, single family homes, etc. This lack of diverse literature inspired her to write the way that she does today. [http://www.eduplace.com/kids/tnc/mtai/woodson.html Houghton Mifflin Reading: Meet Jacqueline Woodson] ] She graduated and got her B.A. in English. She worked as a drama therapist for runaways and homeless children before becoming a full-time writer. [http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-woodson-jacqueline.asp Jacquelin Woodson at Teenreads.com] ]

In her spare time Woodson enjoys reading, sewing, having "heated" political debates with friends and traveling. She has been to all fifty states and also England, France, Germany, Puerto Rico, Belize, Virgin Gorda and Mexico. She speaks Spanish and American Sign Language.

Books

Picture Books

*"Martin Luther King, Jr., and His Birthday" 1990
*"We Had a Picnic This Past Sunday" 1997
*The Other Side 2001
*"Sweet, Sweet Memory" 2000
*"Our Gracie Aunt" 2002
*"Visiting Day" 2002
*"Coming On Home Soon" 2004
*"Show Way" 2005"

Young Adult

*"The Dear One" 1991
*"I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This" 1994
*"Autobiography of a Family Photo" 1995
*"From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun" 1995
*"The House You Pass On The Way" 1998
*"If You Come Softly" 1998
*"Lena" 1999
*"Miracle's Boys" 2000
*"Behind You" 2004
*"Hush" 2002
*"After Tupac and D Foster" 2008

Middle Grades

*"Last Summer with Maizon" 1990
*"Maizon at Blue Hill" 1992
*"Between Madison and Palmetto" 1993
*"Book Chase" 1994
*"Locomotion" 2003
*"Feathers" 2007

Contributor

*"Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence" (edited by Marion Dane Bauer, 1994)
*"Girls Got Game: Sports Stories and Poems" (edited by Sue Macy, 2001)hush

Editor

*"A Way Out of No Way: Writing About Growing Up Black in America" (1996)

she cant write a book for her life

Awards

In 2006, Woodson was named a Newbery Honor Book for "Show Way". Her "Locomotion" was a National Book Award Finalist and won a Coretta Scott King Honor, while her "Miracle's Boys" won the Coretta Scott King Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was made into a mini-series directed by a number of people including Spike Lee. In 2006, she received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Associations's (ALA) Young Adult Library Services Association for her books "I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This", "Lena", "From the Notebook Melanin Sun", "If You Come Softly", and "Miracle’s Boys". For her book "Coming on Home Soon", she won the Caldecott Honor, ALA Notable, Booklist Editor's Choice and Child Magazine Best of 2004.

She is the recipient of three Lambda Literary Awards for "From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun" (1995 Children's/Young Adult category); "Autobiography of a Family Photo" (1995 Lesbian Fiction category); and "The House You Pass On the Way" (1997 Children's/Young Adult category).

The Jane Addams Peace Association honored "I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This"with its 1995 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards in the Books for Older Children category and the following year recognized "From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun" in the same category.

Written in a simple, poetic style, her most recent novel, "Feathers" (2007), is set in 1971 in a mostly black school, where the arrival of a white boy who looks like Jesus creates mystery and resentment. The book was named a Newbery Honor Book at the 2008 ALA Midwinter awards ceremony. She had a quote during a speech, "behind every successful woman is her mighty pen.

References

External links

* [http://www.jacquelinewoodson.com/ Official site]