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Jacqueline Woodson is one of the US's most acclaimed contemporary authors for young people. She first came to attention with her multi-award-winning book Brown Girl Dreaming, a memoir in blank verse of her childhood and family life moving between the American South and New York. She was the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017 and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2018-19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020.
Woodson's text may be spare, but it has the emotional wallop of an offensive tackle. * Shelf Awareness, starred review * ZJ's story will stay with the audience long after the last page is read. * School Library Journal, starred review * A poignant and achingly beautiful narrative shedding light on the price of a violent sport. * Kirkus Reviews, starred review * Woodson delivers a poignant new novel in verse that highlights an important topic within the sports world, especially football. . . . In addition to this, it is a novel that explores family, mental illness, and the healing that a tight-knit, loving community can provide. * Booklist, starred review * Each of the poems ably captures the voice of the story's preteen boy protagonist; readers can feel the sense of love and loss that ZJ is experiencing as his dad slips away. Even though that loss is difficult, Woodson reminds readers that life's challenges are more easily faced with the support of friends and family. * Horn Book, starred review * A beautiful and heart-wrenching story. . . . Eloquent prose poetry creates a moving narrative that reveals the grief of a child trying to understand why his father has changed and why nothing can be done. * Publishers Weekly, starred review *
