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A review by savaging
If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
1.0
A caveat: As a kid I read only picture books about animals for much too long, and went straight from there to adult books, skipping over YA entirely. This is maybe why I have no nostalgia for the genre. They feel only like failed adult books, with the naughties culled out.
And so maybe that's to blame for why I hated this book, even though it tells an important story of the consequences of modern racism. My apologies, but it's not good writing. Aside from being interracial, the relationship is written wholly in cliches. Boy and girl literally meet by bumping into each other in the school hall, she drops her books, he stoops down to help her gather them, their eyes meet, it's magic.
Also: if you're writing for kids about racism, is it more important to paint the story in very stark terms (this person was unidimensionally good, never did anything wrong, and still they suffered); or should authors allow characters to be complex so kids can better relate it to real life? I'm thinking about the Mike Brown obituary asserting that "he was no angel," vs. Jeremiah from this book who is maybe actually an angel. If we expect victims to be pure, does that make us think that everyone else 'deserved it'?
And so maybe that's to blame for why I hated this book, even though it tells an important story of the consequences of modern racism. My apologies, but it's not good writing. Aside from being interracial, the relationship is written wholly in cliches. Boy and girl literally meet by bumping into each other in the school hall, she drops her books, he stoops down to help her gather them, their eyes meet, it's magic.
Also: if you're writing for kids about racism, is it more important to paint the story in very stark terms (this person was unidimensionally good, never did anything wrong, and still they suffered); or should authors allow characters to be complex so kids can better relate it to real life? I'm thinking about the Mike Brown obituary asserting that "he was no angel," vs. Jeremiah from this book who is maybe actually an angel. If we expect victims to be pure, does that make us think that everyone else 'deserved it'?