Chloe and her friends won’t play with the new girl, Maya. Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her friends, they reject her. Eventually Maya stops coming to school. When Chloe’s teacher gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world, Chloe is stung by the lost opportunity for friendship, and thinks about how much better it could have been if she’d shown a little kindness toward Maya.
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle’s Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018–19. She was also a visiting fellow at the American Library in Paris in spring of 2017.
Read Aloud Tips
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Model appropriate fluency and expression. Read the story how you would like the student to read the story.
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The illustrations gives countless opportunities for inferences and deep discussion. Have the students look through these images and predict what may happen.
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Ask students if they resonated with the situations that occurred in the book, or if they identified with the characters. Continue with discussion.
Woodson and Lewis’ latest collaboration unfolds with harsh beauty and the ominousness of opportunities lost. – Kirkus Reviews