Book Report: Each Kindness

19. Jacqueline Woodson, Each Kindness, with illustrations by E. B. Lewis (2012) (9/30/19)

The other day I stumbled on Jacqueline Woodson, in a review of her most recent book, Red at the Bone, a work of adult fiction. She is best known, though, for her children's books (many Newbery Awards) and YA fiction (2014 National Book Award in Young People's Literature for Brown Girl Dreaming, among other honors).  

Each Kindness, which won a Coretta Scott King Award honor, is about a lesson learned too late. It concerns a new girl, Maya, coming to Chloe's elementary school class. Maya does her best to join in and be accepted, but cruelly, Chloe and her friends turn away or make fun of her. And then one day, Maya doesn't come to school. On that same day, the teacher, Ms. Albert, brings a big bowl of water and small stones to class and asks the children to describe one act of kindness they'd performed, then drop a stone into the bowl. "This is what kindness does, Mrs. Albert said. Each little thing we do goes out, like a ripple, into the world." The students take their turns, but when it comes time for Chloe to mention an act—"Even small things count, Ms. Albert said gently"—she can't think of anything. A few days later, Ms. Albert announces that Maya won't be returning to school. "That afternoon, I walked home alone. When I reached the pond, my throat filled with all the things I wished I would have said to Maya. Each kindness I had never shown." She throws small stones into the water, watching the ripples and letting the lost opportunity sink in, as "the chance of a kindness with Maya became more and more forever gone."

That's the story—but the book is much more than just the words. The illustrations add a softer perspective. Here are a few.

Here is Woodson in conversation with Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Lethem about writing about adolescence. And here she is talking about how reading can help young people create the hope and change they want to see in the world.