If You Come Softly

A common love of Tupac Shakur unites three preteens: two from comfortable lives and one, D Foster, who can really relate to Tupac’s lyrics.

ZJ’s friends Ollie, Darry and Daniel help him cope when his father, a beloved professional football player, suffers severe headaches and memory loss that spell the end of his career.

The early years of a girl who grows into a writer has been recreated from family stories combined with memory and presented in verse. Born in February 1963 in Ohio, Woodson’s family soon moves to the South during turbulent years. The history of the writer, her family and a nation combine in rich, metaphorical language.

Narrator Frannie keenly observes the changing dynamics in her classroom when a new white student arrives. Frannie also frets about her family — her deaf brother isolated from the hearing world and her pregnant mother prone to miscarriages.

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat. There, in the room they soon dub the “ARTT Room” they discover it’s safe to talk about what’s bothering them—everything from Esteban’s father’s deportation and Haley’s father’s incarceration to Amari’s fears of racial profiling and Ashton’s adjustment to his changing family fortunes. Together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

Growing up is particularly difficult for Evie Green as she has no past. She lost it when her father testified against fellow police officers in a racially motivated murder. Each family member must learn to deal with their new lives and identities alone.

Two friends — one black and wealthy, the other poor and white — are united by their lack of mothers, but divided by the racism and classicism in their small Ohio town.

Disguised as boys, Lena and her sister Dion flee their father’s abuse. They hitchhike to their mother’s hometown in Kentucky in hopes of finding a relative to care for them.

Through a class poetry assignment, fifth-grader Lonnie reveals the house fire that killed his parents, his separation from his sister, his life in foster care, and his community’s struggle with poverty and racism.

Lonnie, aka Locomotion (first introduced in Locomotion) tries to connect with his sister and to prevent forgetting their “real” parents. As he writes Lili, readers learn about his life including his foster brother who has returned from the Iraq war.

Soonie’s great-grandma was just seven years old when she was sold to a big plantation without her ma and pa, and with only some fabric and needles to call her own. She pieced together bright patches with secret meanings made into quilts called Show Ways — maps for slaves to follow to freedom. When she grew up and had a little girl, she passed on this knowledge. 

Not only is 14-year-old Staggerlee self-named, she is a child of the county’s only interracial marriage. Moreover, Staggerlee is struggling with an attraction to other girls, something that she can share only with a 14-year-old cousin who visits for the summer.