A.G. Gancarski
On Tuesday morning, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry will kick off the 2015 JAX READS! program with a variety of community groups, including BANNED; Remembering for the Future Community Holocaust Initiative; WJCT; The Florida Times-Union; the Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library; and the Jacksonville Public Library Foundation.
The book being read countywide this year is Brown Girl Dreaming, a New York Times best-seller by Jacqueline Woodson, an author known for books such as After Tupac and D Foster, Miracle’s Boys, and other award-winning titles.
Brown Girl Dreaming, which won the 2014 National Book Award, Coretta Scott King Award, and Newbery Honor Award, was chosen by the JPL itself.
Woodson writes that “Brown Girl Dreaming tells the story of my childhood, in verse.”
“Raised in South Carolina and New York, I always felt halfway home in each place. In these poems, I share what it was like to grow up as an African-American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and my growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement,” Woodson said.
Woodson comes to Jacksonville in October. The current Young People’s Poet Laureate will be discussing and signing her book at that time.
