If You Come Softly

by Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson can slip into the soul of her characters, and she has two Newbery Honor Books (Feathers; Show Way) and a Margaret A. Edwards Award (given to an author for the “body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature”) that attest to her gifts. She has never been afraid to address issues that are an everyday part of adolescence but that are not easy to talk about, such as racial tensions and sexuality. In this book, she explores the impact of bigotry as she describes a romance between Ellie, an upper-middle-class white girl who has just transferred to an elite New York City prep school, and Jeremiah, one of her few African-American classmates, whose parents (a movie producer and a famous writer) have just separated. The book’s prologue foreshadows the trouble ahead, and the action alternates between Ellie’s first-person perspective and a third-person narrative that focuses on Jeremiah’s point of view. Each of the narrative threads speaks of their instant chemistry, upon their first meeting, and the tentative trust they begin to build together.  Their profound love for each other stands in stark contrast to the hateful feelings that their relationship brings up for others, both insidious and obvious. (“Thing about white people,” Jeremiah's father tells him, “they know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white”). Woodson asks teens to stand where Ellie and Jeremiah stand, and to try to imagine the world differently, where acceptance of everyone’s right to love trumps judgment about who can love whom.