If You Come Softly, Jacqueline Woodson
If You Come Softly, Jacqueline Woodson
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If You Come Softly
Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Author: Jacqueline Woodson

Narrator: Jorjeana Marie, Guy Lockard, Jacqueline Woodson

Unabridged: 3 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/06/2018

Synopsis

ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOKS OF ALL TIME • From the National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming comes a beautiful, timeless tale where first love encounters the daunting barriers of racism.

“Ever so gently open[s] up issues of racism, self-awareness, and moral consciousness.”—BCCB

From the moment they bump into each other in the crowded hallway of their Manhattan prep school, Ellie and Jeremiah know they fit together, even though she’s Jewish and he’s Black. They come from such different places, but to them that’s not what matters. They have something private and apart from the rest of the world. But the rest of the world might not see it like that . . .

Jacqueline Woodson’s moving story of star-crossed lovers is as relevant today as when it was first published twenty years ago, and this anniversary edition contains a new preface by the author.

About The Author

Jacqueline Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award, and a Sibert Honor. She wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from college with a B.A. in English. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include Coretta Scott King Award winner Before the Ever After; New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me; The Other Side, Each Kindness, Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle's Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jacqueline is also a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and a two-time winner of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on November 06, 2020

I don't really want to review this beyond saying this is a timeless and powerful story. Also, Black Lives Matter. 4.5......more

Goodreads review by April (Aprilius Maximus) on April 12, 2018

*4.5 stars* brb crying because of this book......more

Goodreads review by Kristina on August 01, 2018

For the longest time, I was thinking "this is such a sweet book, but what's the plot?" And then I got to the end. Oh.. oh no. This was a book that ripped my heart out, and I can't believe it was written 20 years ago. It's still so, so relevant today. It's hard to say I "love" a book that's so devasta......more

Goodreads review by Anne on February 24, 2021

It's hard to believe this almost-classic by Jacqueline Woodson is twenty years old: the themes in this love story between two star-crossed teenagers, inspired by Romeo and Juliet and an Audre Lord poem, are as fresh as ever. Jeremiah is comfortable in his Brooklyn neighborhood. But as a Black teen a......more

Goodreads review by Greta on February 22, 2008

if you come softly as the wind within the tress you may hear what i hear see what sorrow sees... and if you come i will be silent nor speak harsh words to you i will not ask you why, now. or how, or what you do. we shall sit here softly beneath two different years and the rich earth between us shall drink our......more

Quotes

One of TIME MAGAZINE’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time

"Woodson infuses their romance with the emotional urgency that defines her work and a prescient sense of social justice."--TIME MAGAZINE

* "Once again, Woodson handles delicate, even explosive subject matter with exceptional clarity, surety and depth. In this contemporary story about an interracial romance, she seems to slip effortlessly into the skins of both her main characters. . . . Both voices convincingly describe the couple's love-at-first-sight meeting and the gradual building of their trust. The intensity of their emotions will make hearts flutter, then ache as evidence mounts that Ellie's and Jeremiah's 'perfect' love exists in a deeply flawed society. Even as Woodson's lyrical prose draws the audience into the tenderness of young love, her perceptive comments about race and racism will strike a chord with black readers and open the eyes of white readers."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Woodson offers readers a poetically conceived novel of young love, permeated with complications of family dynamics, racism, and violence. . . . Woodson unerringly limns the delicate intensity and passionate innocence of first love. . . . The two points of view effectively communicate the loneliness of the two sensitive teenagers and their breathless delight in discovering one another. Characterization is solid and well-developed as both parents and frirends focus into reality through the eyes of Miah and Ellie. Their conversations ever so gently open up issues of racism, self-awareness, and moral consciousness."--The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Woodson perceptively explores varieties of love, trust, and friendship, as she develops well-articulated histories for both families. . . . A tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson's previous books."--Kirkus Reviews

"Lyrical narrative. . . . This fine author once again shows her gift for penning a novel that will ring true with young adults as it makes subtle comments on social situations."--School Library Journal

"As in all her fiction, Woodson confronts prejudice head-on."--Booklist

"Gracefully told."--KLIATT

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