Author | Jacqueline Woodson |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Young adult fiction |
Publisher | Putnam Juvenile |
Publication date | March 1, 2007 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 118 |
ISBN | 978-0-399-23989-2 |
Feathers is a children's historical novel by Jacqueline Woodson that was first published in 2007. The story is about a sixth-grade girl named Frannie growing up in the '70s. One day an unexpected new student causes much chaos to the class because he is the only white boy in the whole school. Feathers grapples with concepts such as religion, race, hope, and understanding. The book examines what it was like to grow up right after segregation had been outlawed, how all people are equal, and that hope is everywhere. The book was a Newbery Honor winner in 2008. [1]
Taking place in the 1970s, in an urban all African American school, this book highlights the hard topics of racism, faith, hope, and disabilities. A white boy comes to the school and is soon dubbed "Jesus Boy". His entrance as the only white student causes tension and misunderstandings. Some of the students believe that he is Jesus and others simply hope he is. He is very quiet and doesn't let Trevor, the class bully, hurt him. He just calmly talks to Trevor and never retaliates.
Jesus Boy knows sign language which intrigues Frannie since she has known sign language her whole life. Frannie has grown up with a deaf older brother, and is very sensitive to how people treat and perceive him. She is hesitant about being friends with Jesus Boy because she does not understand him and wonders why he would cross over "the bridge" to their side. She is torn because she knows how difficult it can be to be the new kid, but she does not want to stand out. Frannie's best friend Samantha believes that Jesus Boy truly is Jesus Christ and that he has come in this time of chaos and because of the war. During all that is going on Frannie constantly thinks of the poem she read in class that said "Hope is the thing with feathers".
Jesus Boy is subject to a lot of bullying by Trevor. Trevor picks on Jesus Boy because he is the only one who is lighter skinned than himself. Trevor has a white father who left his mother before Trevor was born. One day Trevor is swinging and decides to try to jump off and land on a fence because he wants to feel like he is flying. He falls short and breaks his arm. When he comes back to school he is even angrier at Jesus Boy and starts a fight with him with one arm. Trevor swings at Jesus Boy and misses which causes him to fall. The class realizes that Trevor is just a boy and that they shouldn't be afraid of him anymore. Jesus Boy and Frannie immediately go and help Trevor up out of the snow.
Later Samantha asks Frannie why she helped Trevor, and Frannie doesn't know. Samantha then admits that she was wrong about Jesus Boy and says she doesn't know what to believe in anymore. Frannie tries to comfort Samantha and says "Maybe there's a little bit of Jesus inside of all of us. Maybe Jesus is just that something good or something sad or something ... something that makes us do stuff like help Trevor up even when he is cursing us out. Or maybe ... maybe Jesus is just that thing you had when the Jesus Boy got here, Samantha. Maybe Jesus is the hope that you were feeling" (p. 109).
At the end of the book Frannie reflects on all that has been happening in her life. She thinks of her mother's baby, her brother, Samantha's loss of faith, and, especially, Jesus Boy. She remembers the poem she read in class and decides "Each moment, I am thinking, is a thing with feathers"
The title of the book, Feathers, is a metaphor that the book revolves around. Woodson introduces it through a poem that Frannie reads in class.
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul,
And sings the tune-- without the words,
And never stops at all
After reading this, Frannie spends the rest of the book trying to understand hope. How does it have feathers?
The effort to understand one another was the focus of the sixth grade class as soon as Jesus Boy entered their classroom. Through Jesus Boy they realize that even the bully, Trevor, is a normal kid. After the fight Frannie realizes "Even though he was mean all the time, the sun still stopped and colored him and warmed him─like it did to everybody else" (p. 21) Jesus Boy helped the class to stop beating up each other so much and Trevor got scared by him.
Frannie's older brother is deaf and this is a source of tension throughout the story. Frannie feels compelled to protect her brother in a world of people who do not understand him. One difficulty Sean encounters is girls being attracted to him until they find out he is deaf. Woodson stated in an interview with NPR that she made Sean deaf in order to humanize the deaf. [2] One scene in the book that does this well is when Frannie asks Sean what a guitar sounds like, a game they play with one another. His sign back is 'Like rain. Coming down real soft when it's warm out and you only get a little wet but not cold. That kind of rain.'
Feathers was well received by critics and the public alike. The book was a Newbery Honor book in 2008. [1] Robin Smith, of Book Page, said that the book filled him with "joy and hope." [3] Norah Piehl, of Kids Reads, reviewed the book saying, "Set against the music, politics and conflicts of the early 1970s, Jacqueline Woodson's exceptional new novel grounds universal ideas in a particular time and place." [4] Matt Berman, of Common Sense Media stated the book is beautifully written, lyrical, thoughtful, at times even wise and that it will also be loved by adults. [5] One reviewer raved about the book but said "While the subject matter isn't as controversial as some of Woodson's others it might lead a child living in today's society to have questions about race, segregation and religion". [6]
Overall, the book gets mostly high praise, and Jacqueline Woodson is hailed for her beautiful style of writing. One fan says Woodson writes "pages of poetry" and "without any heavy-handedness or manipulation". [7]
Jaqueline Woodson has written 29 books spanning from picture books to young adult fiction. [8] Her books have received numerous awards such as the Caldecott Honor, Newbery Honor, and the Coretta Scott King Award. Feathers most resembles her novel Locomotion in which she "tackled grief, trauma, death survival, and hope". [7] all in a very short book. Feathers is also short but addresses big concepts of "hope, healing, faith, and understanding". [7] Both of the books are around 115 pages and adequately handle their difficult topics.
Bridge to Terabithia is a children's novel written by Katherine Paterson; it is about two children named Leslie and Jesse who create a magical forest kingdom in their imaginations. The book was originally published in 1977 by Thomas Crowell, and in 1978, it won the Newbery Medal. Paterson drew inspiration for the novel from a real event that occurred in August 1974 when her son's friend was struck and killed by lightning.
Pay It Forward is a 2000 American romantic drama film directed by Mimi Leder. The film is based loosely on the novel of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It is set in Las Vegas, and it chronicles 11- to 12-year-old Trevor McKinney's launch of a goodwill movement known as "pay it forward". It stars Haley Joel Osment as Trevor, Helen Hunt as his alcoholic single mother Arlene McKinney, and Kevin Spacey as his physically and emotionally scarred social studies teacher Eugene Simonet. The film was released on October 20, 2000, to mixed-to-negative reviews and was a box office disappointment, grossing $55.7 million worldwide against a $40 million budget.
Hoot is a 2002 children's mystery/suspense novel by Carl Hiaasen. The story takes place in Florida, where new arrival Roy makes two oddball friends and a bad enemy. Roy joins an effort to stop construction of a pancake house which would destroy a colony of burrowing owls who live on the site. The book won a Newbery Honor award in 2003.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a 1977 Newbery Medal awarded novel by Mildred D. Taylor. It is a part of her Logan family series, a sequel to her 1975 novella Song of the Trees.
The View from Saturday is a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 1996. It won the 1997 Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature, the author's second Medal.
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. Her novel Another Brooklyn was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction. She won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2018. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.
A Solitary Blue (1987) is a novel by Cynthia Voigt. It was a Newbery Honor book in 1984. It is the third book of the Tillerman Cycle, set concurrently with Dicey's Song and Come a Stranger. It revolves around Jeff Greene, a boy who struggles after being abandoned by his mother at age 7.
Rules is the debut novel by author Cynthia Lord. Released by Scholastic, Inc. in 2006, it was a Newbery Honor book in 2007. It is a Sunshine State Young Readers book for 2008–2009 and won A 2007 Schneider Family Book Award. In 2009 it also won the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award.
Flying Solo is a young adult novel written by Ralph Fletcher, first published in 1998.
How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity is an anthology of LGBTQ short stories for young adults edited by American author Michael Cart. It was first published in 2009. The anthology contains an introduction by Cart, 11 short stories, and one novella by acclaimed lesbian and gay authors.
A Silent Voice is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshitoki Ōima. The series was originally published as a one-shot in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine and was later serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from August 2013 to November 2014. Its chapters were collected in seven tankōbon volumes. The manga was digitally released in English by Crunchyroll Manga and was licensed by Kodansha USA in North America. An anime theatrical film adaptation produced by Kyoto Animation was released in September 2016.
Paperboy is a 2013 young adult novel by author Vince Vawter. The novel was a Newbery Medal Honor Book in 2014.
Show Way is a 2005 children's picture book by American author Jacqueline Woodson with illustrations by Hudson Talbott. The book was made into a film in 2012 by Weston Woods Studios, Inc., narrated by the author. It recounts the stories of seven generations of African-Americans and is based on the author's own family history. Show Way was a John Newbery Medal Honor Book in 2006 and was featured in Reading Rainbow that same year in the series finale.
The Book of Unknown Americans is a 2014 novel by Cristina Henríquez published by Knopf. The story is told from multiple first-person points of view, with the two main narrators being Alma Rivera, a 30-something housewife from Pátzcuaro, Mexico, and Mayor Toro, a teenage social outcast and first-generation Hispanic and Latino American whose parents were originally from Panama.
Brown Girl Dreaming is a 2014 adolescent verse memoir written by Jacqueline Woodson. It tells the story of the author’s early childhood life growing up as an African American girl in the 1960’s and depicts the events that led her to become a writer. The book has been considered one of the exemplary pieces of modern children’s literature by critics who have analyzed the book and has gained positive reception. It has won multiple awards, including a Newbery Honor.
Kelly Barnhill is an American author of children's literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Her novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon was awarded the 2017 Newbery Medal. Kirkus Reviews named When Women Were Dragons one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022.
Liar & Spy is a children's novel written by Rebecca Stead published in 2012 that is set in Brooklyn and describes the adventures of Georges and Safer, two middle school students who are working to unmask a suspected spy in their building. At the same time, Georges is experiencing a casual bullying that adults in his life seem to minimize. Stead was the first American author to win the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Liar & Spy, in 2013.
Wolf Hollow is a young adult novel written by Lauren Wolk, published by Dutton Children's Books in 2016. It is set in rural western Pennsylvania during the autumn of 1943 and describes how the protagonist, Annabelle "learned how to lie" and "that what I said and what I did mattered" in relation to two interlopers in her life: the bully Betty Glengarry, and the mysterious drifter Toby. It was named a Newbery Honor book in 2016.
New Kidis a 2019 graphic novel by Jerry Craft. The novel tells the story of a 12-year-old African American boy named Jordan Banks who experiences culture shock when he enrolls at a private school. During Jordan's freshman year at a prestigious private school, he has to adjust to a new school, experiences and witnesses microaggressions, and makes friends with other students. The book is semi-autobiographical for Craft, who based the book on his experiences in a private school and those of his two sons. While he wishes the book to be appreciated by a wide range of readers, Craft particularly wanted it to accurately reflect a present-day African American experience.
The Last Cuentista is a middle-grade dystopian novel by Donna Barba Higuera, published October 12, 2021 by Levine Querido. The story follows Petra Peña who, along with her family and a few hundred others, leave Earth to continue the human race after a comet strikes the planet. After awaking on a new planet, Petra is the only one who remembers Earth and must use storytelling to keep her people's history alive. It was published in British English under the title The Last Storyteller in 2022.