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Summary
Summary
Finalist for the National Book Award
When Lonnie was seven years old, his parents died in a fire. Now he's eleven, and he still misses them terribly. And he misses his little sister, Lili, who was put into a different foster home because "not a lot of people want boys-not foster boys that ain't babies." But Lonnie hasn't given up. His foster mother, Miss Edna, is growing on him. She's already raised two sons and she seems to know what makes them tick. And his teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper.
Told entirely through Lonnie's poetry, we see his heartbreak over his lost family, his thoughtful perspective on the world around him, and most of all his love for Lili and his determination to one day put at least half of their family back together. Jacqueline Woodson's poignant story of love, loss, and hope is lyrically written and enormously accessible.
Author Notes
Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio on February 12, 1963. She received a B.A. in English from Adelphi University in 1985. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as a drama therapist for runaways and homeless children in New York City. Her books include The House You Pass on the Way, I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, Lena, and The Day You Begin. She won the Coretta Scott King Award in 2001 for Miracle's Boys. After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way won Newbery Honors. Brown Girl Dreaming won the E. B. White Read-Aloud Award in 2015. Her other awards include the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. She was also selected as the Young People's Poet Laureate in 2015 by the Poetry Foundation.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The kinetic energy of the aptly named Locomotion (the nickname of Lonnie Collins Motion) permeates the 60 poems that tell his sad yet hopeful story. Lonnie's first poem sets up a conflict familiar to anyone who has attempted creativity: despite the cheering of his teacher, Ms. Marcus ("Write it down before it leaves your brain," she says), as he begins to write, Lonnie hears the critical voice of his foster mother ("It's Miss Edna's over and over/ Be quiet!"). As Lonnie explores poetry's various forms throughout this brief yet poignant and occasionally humorous volume, he also reveals Miss Edna's kindness toward him in the little things she says and does ("The last time Miss Edna came home and found me/ crying She said Think/ about all the stuff you love, Lonnie"). Gradually Lonnie reveals that at age seven, his parents died in a fire, leaving him and his younger sister, Lili, orphaned. Lili was adopted, yet Lonnie figures out a way to visit her regularly. The gradual unfolding of his life's events intermingle with his discoveries about poetry as a form, from haiku to sonnets ("Ms. Marcus says "sonnet" comes from "sonnetto"/ and that sonnetto means little song or sound/ It reminds me of that guy's name Gepetto/ the one who made Pinocchio from wood he found") to the epistle poems he writes to his father and to God. Woodson, through Lonnie, creates (much as Sharon Creech did with the boy narrator in Love That Dog) a contagious appreciation for poetry while using the genre as a cathartic means for expressing the young poet's own grief. Ages 10-up. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) ""You don't just get to write a poem once / You gotta write it over and over and over / until it feels real good to you / And sometimes it does / and sometimes it doesn't / That's what's really great / and really stupid / about poetry."" Like Jack in Sharon Creech's Love That Dog (rev. 11/01), fifth-grader Lonnie has a teacher who introduces him to poetry and makes him believe in his writing. Woodson, however, more ably convinces us that her protagonist really does have a gift. The sixty poems are skillfully and artfully composed--but they still manage to sound fresh, spontaneous, and believably those of an eleven-year-old. Lonnie experiments with form, including sonnets, haiku, and epistle poems, but his poems are mostly free verse, and while the line breaks feel natural, Woodson has chosen them thoughtfully and made them compelling. As for emotional content, the poems sparely, but with great feeling, convey Lonnie's gradual healing as he comes to terms with tragedy (his parents died in a fire four years ago) and with his present situation (his younger sister has been adopted, while he lives in a foster home). Named for the sixties dance hit ""Locomotion,"" Lonnie Collins Motion writes poems that aptly contain, just as the song says, ""a little bit of rhythm / And a lotta soul."" The accessible form of this narrative will attract readers; Woodson's finely crafted story of heartbreak and hope won't let them go. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 3^-6. Lonnie is grieving and angry about the loss of his parents in a fire four years ago and about his subsequent separation from his beloved little sister, who is in foster care. He expresses his feelings in his fifth-grade poetry-writing class, encouraged by his wonderful teacher Ms. Marcus. In a series of free-verse poems and more formal verse, such as haiku and sonnets, he writes about his life and about the writing that "makes me remember." The framework of the story is fairy-tale idyllic--perfect family before the fire; happy-ever-after foster family by the end of the book--but the poetry is simple and immediate, true to the voice of the lost kid who finds himself with caring people and with words. The line breaks make for very easy reading, and Lonnie talks about those line breaks and about poetry forms, making this ideal for use in classrooms where students are reading and writing poetry. From rap to haiku, Woodson shows and tells that poetry is about who we are. --Hazel Rochman
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Lonnie Collins Motion (Lo-Co-Motion) has been grieving the accidental death of his parents for four years. Now 11, he works through his grief by writing poetry with encouragement from his teacher who understands the nature of his poetic gift and the cathartic necessity of getting him to express his feelings through it. Bit by bit, listeners learn about Lonnie: the deaths of his parents in an electrical fire at their home; the twist of fate that spared Lonnie and his sister; his hard-knock stint as a "throw-away boy" in a group home; the foster home he now lives in with loving caretaker, Miss Edna; and the longing he feels to be reconnected with his sister. In her novel (Penguin, 2003), Jacqueline Woodson uses various forms of poetry, such as haiku, sonnet, and free verse, to convey the boy's range of emotions. Dion Graham gives Lonnie's lyrical voice a gravelly and deep tone, perfectly conveying his feelings. A powerful, heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful story.-Jennifer Verbrugge, Dakota County Library, Eagan, MN (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Count on award-winning Woodson (Visiting Day, p. 1403, etc.) to present readers with a moving, lyrical, and completely convincing novel in verse. Eleven-year-old Lonnie ("Locomotion") starts his poem book for school by getting it all down fast: "This whole book's a poem 'cause every time I try to / tell the whole story my mind goes Be quiet! / Only it's not my mind's voice, / it's Miss Edna's over and over and over / Be quiet! . . . So this whole book's a poem because poetry's short and / this whole book's a poem 'cause Ms. Marcus says / write it down before it leaves your brain." Lonnie tells readers more, little by little, about his foster mother Miss Edna, his teacher Ms. Marcus, his classmates, and the fire that killed his parents and separated him from his sister. Slowly, his gift for observing people and writing it down lets him start to love new people again, and to widen his world from the nugget of tragedy that it was. Woodson nails Lonnie's voice from the start, and lets him express himself through images and thoughts that vibrate in the different kinds of lines he puts down. He tends to free verse, but is sometimes assigned a certain form by Ms. Marcus. ("Today's a bad day / Is that haiku? Do I look / like I even care?") As in her prose novels, Woodson's created a character whose presence you can feel like they were sitting next to you. And with this first novel-in-verse for her, Lonnie will sit by many readers and teach them to see like he does, "This day is already putting all kinds of words / in your head / and breaking them up into lines / and making the lines into pictures in your mind." Don't let anyone miss this. (Fiction. 9-13)
Excerpts
Excerpts
Table of Contents ALSO BY JACQUELINE WOODSON Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph POEM BOOK ROOF LINE BREAK POEM MEMORY MAMA LILI FIRST COMMERCIAL BREAK HAIKU GROUP HOME BEFORE MISS EDNA'S HOUSE HALLOWEEN POEM PARENTS POEM SONNET POEM HOW I GOT MY NAME DESCRIBE SOMEBODY EPISTLE POEM ROOF POEM II ME, ERIC, LAMONT & ANGEL FAILING NEW BOY DECEMBER 9 LIST POEM LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN HALSEY STREET PARK PIGEON SOMETIMES POEM WAR POEM GEORGIA NEW BOY POEM II TUESDAY VISITING JUST NOTHING POEM GOD POEM ALL OF A SUDDEN, THE POEM HEY DOG OCCASIONAL POEM HAIKU POEM LATENYA POETRY POEM ERIC POEM LAMONT HIP HOP RULES THE WORLD PHOTOGRAPHS NEW BOY POEM III HAPPINESS POEM BIRTH LILI'S NEW MAMA'S HOUSE CHURCH NEW BOY POEM IV TEACHER OF THE YEAR EASTER SUNDAY RODNEY EPITAPH POEM FIREFLY THE FIRE ALMOST SUMMER SKY CLYDE POEM I: DOWN SOUTH FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL DEAR GOD LATENYA II JUNE Acknowledgements Discussion Questions An Exciting Preview of : Brown Girl Dreaming An Exciting Preview of : Peace, Locomotion MAMA Some days, like today and yesterday and probably tomorrow--all my missing gets jumbled up inside of me. You know honeysuckle talc powder? Mama used to smell like that. She told me honeysuckle's really a flower but all I know is the powder that smells like Mama. Sometimes when the missing gets real bad I go to the drugstore and before the guard starts following me around like I'm gonna steal something I go to the cosmetics lady and ask her if she has it.... ALSO BY JACQUELINE WOODSON After Tupac and D Foster Behind You Beneath a Meth Moon Between Madison and Palmetto Brown Girl Dreaming The Dear One Feathers From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun The House You Pass on the Way Hush I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This If You Come Softly Last Summer with Maizon Lena Maizon at Blue Hill Miracle's Boys Peace, Locomotion SPEAK Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2003 Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004 Copyright © Jacqueline Woodson, 2003 Excerpted from Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
