LITERATURE + LECTURES

Cool Brains! Inprint Readings for Young People presents award winning African American writer Jacqueline Woodson. Woodson will read from and talk about her work, followed by a book sale and signing, providing audience members an opportunity to visit with the author.

Jacqueline Woodson is the author of 25 books, including 8 picture books, 6 middle grade books, and 11 young adult novels. Her popular works include the Newbery Honor book Feathers, about a white boy, with Jesus-like looks, who arrives in a mostly black school, leaving a wake of mystery and resentment; Caldecott Honor picture book Coming on Home Soon, about a young girl from the rural South whose mother goes to work in Chicago during World War II; Newbery Honor book Show Way, which through quilting tells the history of the women in the author’s family; National Book Award finalist Locomotion, a YA novel told through 60 interconnected poems; and Miracle’s Boys, about three New York City brothers who raise themselves after losing their father to drowning and their mother to diabetes—the book won the Coretta Scott King Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was made into a mini-series directed by, among others, Spike Lee.

Woodson’s newest book, After Tupac and D Foster, a 2009 Newbery Honor book, explores the impact of rapper Tupac Shakur’s work and death on three young girls and their friend, D, who lives in Tupac’s world.