Brown Girl Dreaming

For my verse book, I chose Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, which follows the author’s story growing up as a young African- American girl in the 60’s and 70’s in both the North and South. Having to deal with remnants of the civil rights movement, Woodson shares her childhood memories told through beautiful passionate verse. I am super excited to read this book, I have been flying through the pages and am already enthralled with her story. The unique versing and structure of her thoughts was difficult at first, but once I changed how I was approaching the reading, it has such a beautiful flow I can’t seem to put the book down. I personally love this style of writing, and because it is her own story, Jacqueline has the freedom to create whatever format she sees fit. The breaks in between the stanzas also make it so that I can go back and really resonate with her thoughts, and picture how she lived. I would love to incorporate these types of books in a classroom, to challenge the students and see how they do with a non- traditional formatted novel. My students would be exposed to all different kinds of books, and these verse books will only help to expand not only their reading skills, but their creativity as well. Although writing a poem seemed to be much more difficult than reading one…

 

So much depends

upon

 

The sun

rising

 

The birds

chirping

 

I depend

upon

 

Coffee

brewing