Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

Image retrieved from www.amazon.com

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Woodson, Jacqueline. Feathers. New York, The Penguin Group: 2007. ISBN: 9780399239892

2. PLOT SUMMARY

Frannie’s teacher reads “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson. Frannie interprets the poem as “hope getting inside you and never stopping.” She is growing up in the 1970s on the black side of a highway that separates the white families from the black families. She goes to an all black school, until one day when a white boy shows up and earns the nickname Jesus Boy. In the end, hope gets inside Frannie. She sees it all around her - in the Jesus Boy, in the class bully, in her brother’s deafness, in her mother’s pregnancy, and in her best friend.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Jacqueline Woodson transports the reader to the black side of a segregated town in the winter of 1971. The students there are dealing both with a war abroad - in Vietnam - and with  prejudice. These topics draw today’s students in because they can relate to a war abroad and to turmoil at home. Today’s students aren’t struggling with prejudice, but they’re trying to find their own place and voice in the world just the same. Woodson brings the 1970s much closer to home by dealing with these topics.

Hope is the theme of this book from the very beginning. Frannie’s teacher reads Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers,” and Frannie begins trying to figure out hope. Her older brother, Sean, is deaf, and her mother has lost babies to death and miscarriage. She hasn’t known much about hope up to this point in her life. After reading Dickinson’s poem, she thinks of hope as something “getting inside you and never stopping,” and “moving forward and not looking behind you.” When Jesus Boy walks into Frannie’s class, he becomes a representation of hope. He’s a white boy in an all black school, and when he is nicknamed Jesus Boy, it’s as if he is the one who has come to save them - to bring them hope. In the end, Jesus Boy is unkind to Trevor, the class bully, and it becomes obvious he’s not the Savior of the world. He’s just the hope of something better.

When Frannie realizes her mother is pregnant again, she becomes afraid that her mother will lose this baby just like she lost the others. Her brother, Sean, tells her, “Don’t start your stupid worrying.” She struggles to find hope in her mother’s pregnancy, but she does in the end. She watches her mother’s belly grow and grow, and she takes her teacher’s advice to “always look for the moments and some of them might be perfect, filled with light and hope and laughter. Moments that stay with us forever and ever.” She climbs onto Mama’s lap, holding onto the hope inside her growing belly.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

2008 Newbery Honor Book

From SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL - “The story ends with hope and thoughtfulness while speaking to those adolescents who struggle with race, faith, and prejudice. They will appreciate its wisdom and positive connections.”

From KIRKUS REVIEWS - “Woodson captures perfectly the questions and yearnings of a girl perched on the edge of adolescence, a girl who readers will take into their hearts and be glad to call their friend.”

5. CONNECTIONS

Gather other books written by Jacqueline Woodson to read such as:

• Brown Girl Dreaming. ISBN 0399252517

• This is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration. ISBN 0399239863
• Locomotion. ISBN 0399231153

Have students choose one character from the novel and write an essay about how they represent the theme of hope throughout the book.

Class discussion about how today’s students can relate to Frannie. Discuss their reaction to the subject of racism in the novel. How do they react to students of different races when they arrive at school?