Puffin Books (4/21/2020)

Paperback. As new.

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson’s timely middle-grade novel celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

It all starts when six kids are sent to a room for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the place they dub the ARTT room (“A Room To Talk”), they discover it’s safe to open up. A father has recently gone missing, and that starts a conversation about other things they’re facing, from racial profiling and fears of deportation to a deep yearning for family history and a sense of belonging. When they’re together, they can express the feelings and fears they usually hide from the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. Her National Book Award- winning memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, was a New York Times bestseller and received the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor. Her adult book Another Brooklyn was a National Book Award finalist. Author of over two dozen books for young readers, she’s won four Newbery Honors, four National Book Awards, and two Coretta Scott King Awards. Her books include Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. She also received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.