Tags
Each Kindness, by Jacqueline Woodson – review by Mary Ann Scheuer
Be kind. Be present. Act the way you want to be treated.
These are all messages we try to share with our children, our students, ourselves. And yet do the lectures work? How do we help our kids see the impact that their actions have?
Jacqueline Woodson’s picture book Each Kindness struck me the moment I read it, with quiet intensity and searing honesty. Find a quiet moment to read this book and then share it with your class, your children, your friends.
Maya is the new girl, arriving in the middle of winter to a new school. The teacher sits her next to Chloe, but Chloe won’t look at Maya or return her smiles. Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her gang, they reject her. One of Chloe’s friends calls Maya by the harsh nickname “Never New,” because she always buys her clothes at the secondhand store.
Woodson tells this story from Chloe’s point of view, keeping the reader focused on Chloe’s perspective. We can feel the uncertainty that Chloe has, not feeling a connection to this new girl. But we also see the hurt it causes as Chloe walks away from Maya time and time again.
As Tasha Saker writes at Waking Brain Cells in her review of Each Kindness, ““Woodson does not pull back on her message here. She speaks directly to the sort of bullying that groups of girls are best at, ignoring and dismissing. Readers will immediately feel for Maya, who has done nothing at all to earn the scorn of the girls, except wear the wrong clothes.”
Woodson takes this situation a step farther, not providing the easy resolution of a happy ending, but showing what happens when Chloe realizes the hurt she’s caused and cannot undo it. With a simple, nonjudgemental discussion, the girls’ teacher talks to her class about the way we impact one another.
“The next day, Maya’s seat was empty. In class that morning, we were talking about kindness. Ms. Albert had brought a big bowl into class and filled it with water. We all gathered around her desk and watched her drop a small stone into it. Tiny waves rippled out, away from the stone. ‘This is what kindness does,’ Ms. Albert said.
‘Each little thing we do goes out, like a ripple, into the world.’”
Jacqueline Woodson is at her finest with this picture book for older readers. She says in an interview on The Joy of Children’s Literature, “I was inspired by seeing third- and fourth-grade girls being so mean to each other and not even realizing that’s what they were doing. I remember thinking, ‘They think this moment is always going to be here, that there will always be a chance to go back and undo that.’ And it’s not true. So Each Kindness is about a girl who isn’t kind and what happens with that. It’s about the importance of kindness—something I deeply believe in.”
Each Kindness is an intensely powerful book, one that will send ripples out to your classroom. Ask your students if it seems real to them, if these types of situations really happen. Ask them what they think about the ending. Do they like the way that Woodson leaves it? Why do they think she chose this ending?
As we approach Thanksgiving, I hope each one of us can think about the small actions we can take and how these ripple out across the world. Share a small smile with a student across the room; give an unexpected compliment; set aside a special book and tell a student you were thinking just of them — it’s amazing how far each kindness can travel.
Mary Ann Scheuer is the librarian at Emerson School in Berkeley. She writes the blog Great Kid Books and loves sharing books with anyone who walks by. Follow her on Twitter at @MaryAnnScheuer
Nerdy Book Club 
As you know I’m a big fan of this book too and had a wonderful conversation with my 4th graders about it. One described it perfectly as both a bad and a good book. Bad because the situation was so hard and good because it is so well-done. I gather some teachers are uncomfortable sharing it with kids because the ending shocks them, but it is there that the best conversations start. As I wrote in my review, I think Woodson does something brilliant in her ending — while it doesn’t end in the expected satisfying resolution it does give you hope that Chloe is a different and better person because of what happened. I like to think she would never do something like this again.
Also, I wanted to point out that the interview you quote from is actually at PW (http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/50241-q-a-with-jacqueline-woodson.html).
This book sounds amazing!! Just added to my to-read list. Thank you.
Mary Ann, Thank you for reviewing this terrific book; it is just as you describe: quietly intense and searingly honest. I would like to note that you are just the right person to review this book. Thank you for your many kindnesses – you always include others and you really walk the walk. I am happy to start the day reading this review by you!
Susan, thank you for your kind words. They mean so much.
Monica, yes – this is a good and bad book. It was fascinating to hear the students talk about whether they liked the ending the way it was, or whether they would have preferred a happy ending. The class was evenly split, but the conversation was fantastic. You are right that the interview was from PW. I hadn’t realized that The Joy of Children’s Literature quoted the PW interview in part – I was reading too quickly to get to Woodson’s answer! Thanks for sharing the link to the full interview.
Conversations about this issue are very important, and Jacqueline Woodson has given us the perfect vehicle to help us do both challenging, then amazing teaching. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of many.
I just added this to my “to-read” list, as well. I love sharing books with kids that call out to the natural goodness inside them, and it sounds like this book accomplishes it without being preachy or superficial in its treatment of the subject.