Dreaming with @JackieWoodson in Preparation of #LSUYAL2015: A Thought, Some Lines, and Several Finger Snaps

wow. simply wow.

When brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Jackie) arrived to my home in Stratford, Connecticut a month ago I took notice of its cover and placed it on a shelf to await the hustle and bustle of the semester to end. Of course, Attallah (the Diva) took it off my shelf and quickly asked, "Frog, did you know she wrote this memoir poetically?" I did not. Leave it to the Diva to find anything poetic in my house (she is, after all, a walking poem).

It may not be readily viewed here, but the young woman on the cover of brown girl dreaming (depicted as a silhouette with light behind her) is opening a book where butterflies are fluttering from within the pages. In the Woodson family, Odella Caroline was the reader. Hope Austine (I love to believe in hope - world's oldest trilogy) was the chemist. Jackie was the tomboy and writer.

And thankfully for those of us who work with teachers and adolescent readers, the writer she became.

I couldn't put the book down; it was wonderful company on my flight from Hartford to Baton Rouge...so much so that I had to jot a few of her lines into my own notebook (they resonated with my Grandpa Spence, a Camel-smoking Navy man whose life ended with, like the author's grandfather, a shortness of breath). Perhaps this is why Woodson's verse, "Tobacco," a theme carried throughout the memoir, hit home with me - the love for her grandfather was obvious, as was my own for Spence.

The old people used to say / a pinch of dirt in the mouth / can tell tobacco's story,

she wrote early on. Yet, later she  followed the thought with "how to listen #3,"

Middle of the night                                                                                                                    my grandfather is coughing                                                                                                   me upright. Startled.

The punch (power of her craft) made me bite my lip. It hit the humanity we all belong to, and 24 pages later in "what god knows," she continues,

At the end of the day                                                                                                             he lights a cigarette, unlaces                                                                                                        his dusty brogans. Stretches his legs                                                                                     God sees my good, he says.                                                                                                        Do all the preaching and praying you want                                                                                           but no need to do it for me.

Jackie Woodson, Jason Reynolds,
 Steven Bickmore, and Kwame Alexander - NCTE 2014

Wow. Just wow. Jackie Woodson. Add an 'o' to God and it is Good. The Great Whatever. A Story teller. Thinker. Questioner. She "could write anything." What a gift to read brown girl dreaming on my way to LSU  - dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.

And I know now                                                                                                                         words are my Tingalayo. Words are my brilliance.

And they are.

On Tuesday, I host an "As In" workshop that will highlight 20+ years of promoting poetry in K-12 schools. It is part of my five-day seminar on using young adult literature to inspire young writers. To know that Jacqueline Amanda Woodson will be nearby has me dreaming, too (and reflecting, didn't Kwame introduce me to her at NCTE last year? Um, I guess he did - see above - and look what's in her hand ---- her book!)

And so I'm thinking about Kermit and his banjo as I write this morning.

Someday, we'll find it. The human connection. The lovers, the dreamers, and me (all of us under its spell, we know that it's probably magic).

La dee dee la dee dee da. What a beautiful world.