Locomotion

Jacqueline Woodson
G.P. Putnam’s Sons January 2003 0-399-23115-3 $15.99
128 pages 8-1/2 x 5-3/4 Ages 10 and up

A wise educator once pointed out that no teacher, while jotting down objectives for a poetry unit, includes one that says, “get students to hate poetry.” Somehow, though, that objective is achieved in many classrooms; thus, such books as Love That Dog (Joanna Cotler, 2001) by Sharon Creech have provided a welcome glimpse of students finding their own voices as they read and write poems. Now Jacqueline Woodson, always lyrical in her prose, has added Locomotion, a book of narrative poems about the power of poetry.
          Lonnie Collins Motion is a tangle of tough emotions. His Mama and Daddy are dead. His little sister has been adopted by a family who didn’t want him. “In my head,” he says, “I see a fire. I see black windows./ I hear people hollering. I smell smoke./ I hear a man’s voice saying I’m so sorry./ I hear myself screaming.” But when his friends are talking about tragedies they’ve witnessed, Lonnie says, “Never seen nothing.” If he ever does try to tell his story, his mind says, “Be quiet.”
          Ms. Marcus, Lonnie’s teacher, fills her classroom with poetry. Anyone who has seen students at work in their poetry notebooks will get a grin out of the day when one student, Angel, announces he is going to write a book of poems called All of a Sudden, The Sun. When Ms. Marcus calls the idea “wonderful” and “brilliant,” other students leap in to say they are writing books, too: All of a Sudden, The Moon. All of a Sudden, The School. All of a Sudden, The Pepsi Cola Can. All of a sudden, Ms. Marcus is telling the class it’s time for math.
          But Lonnie sticks with poetry. He tries an occasional poem, a haiku, free verse. He encounters Richard Wright and Langston Hughes—“black guys” who wrote poetry. He sometimes has to write his thoughts down quickly, before his foster mom’s voice comes into his mind and makes the ideas in his head “go out like a candle.” But he keeps writing. He keeps letting the pictures in his mind spin themselves into poems until one day, he realizes “there’s not a voice saying Be quiet, Lonnie in your head anymore/ Just words./ Lots and lots and lots of words.”

—Jane Kurtz

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