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Jacqueline Woodson

Picture Books

Cover of The Year We Learned to Fly

The Year We Learned to Fly

Where it takes place:

Just like The Day You Begin, it takes place wherever and whenever we need to remember we can fly.

Where I wrote it:

I wrote this one in Brooklyn, NY and in Brewster, NY.

Why I wrote it:

I started writing The Year We Learned To Fly before the pandemic. I wanted to remember the people who came before us and how they sometimes had to figure out how to escape hard times. Then I remembered myself as a kid and how I'd use my imagination whenever I couldn't be somewhere I wanted to be.

El ao en que aprendimos a volar  spanish version
Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for adults, children, and adolescents. She is best known for her National Book Award-Winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her picture books The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly were NY Times Bestsellers. 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 2018–19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020. Later that same year, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.