By Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson's poem about the feeling of being the new or the different one in the room, and the day you find the words to tell your own story.
This is more a poem than a story. Jacqueline Woodson opens with a line she keeps coming back to: there will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you. Then she shows what that feels like. A girl named Angelina stayed home all summer taking care of her little sister while the other children went off to far places, and when it's her turn to share, she can feel the whole room looking at her and wishes she were smaller. Another child's lunch isn't like anyone else's, and the others stare. But Woodson keeps turning back toward one moment: the day you begin to tell your own story out loud is the day someone across the room leans in and says, me too. Rafael López fills every page with color.
I'd reach for this one when a child is about to be the new face somewhere — a new school, a new class, a room where they may feel like the only one who looks or lives or spent their summer differently from everyone else. Woodson doesn't hurry past the lonely part. She sits in it long enough that a child who has felt it may feel recognized, and then she shows a way through, which is just telling your own story and finding out someone else has one like it. It's the most emotionally full book on this shelf.