Jacqueline Woodson (was the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and she received the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. (This book is also available in Spanish, as El Día En Que Descubres Quién Eres!) And that sometimes, when we reach out and begin to share our stories, others will be happy to meet us halfway. Jacqueline Woodson’s lyrical text and Rafael López’s dazzling art reminds us that we all feel like outsiders sometimes-and how brave it is that we go forth anyway. It’s not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it.

Maybe it’s how you look or talk, or where you’re from maybe it’s what you eat, or something just as random. There are many reasons to feel different. There will be times when you walk into a room National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson and two-time Pura Belpré Illustrator Award winner Rafael López have teamed up to create a poignant, yet heartening book about finding courage to connect, even when you feel scared and alone. (Aug.Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Illustrator’s agent: Stefanie Von Borstel, Full Circle. Author’s agent: Kathleen Nishimoto, William Morris Endeavor. Woodson’s gentle, lilting story and López’s artistry create a stirring portrait of the courage it takes to be oneself: “There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you until the day you begin/ to share your stories.” Ages 5–8. She describes the moment when the girl who didn’t go on vacation speaks her truth, her “voice stronger than it was a minute ago.” She has cared for her sister all summer, she tells her classmates, reading and telling stories: “Even though we were right on our block it was like/ we got to go EVERYWHERE.” And “all at once” in the seconds after sharing one’s story, something shifts, common ground is revealed, and “the world opens itself up a little wider/ to make some space for you.” López ( Drum Dream Girl) paints the book’s array of children as students in the same classroom patterns and colors on the children’s clothing and the growing things around them fill the spreads with life. Woodson ( Brown Girl Dreaming) imagines being “an only” in the classroom-what it’s like to be the only one with an accent (“No one understands the way words curl from your mouth”), the only one who stayed home during summer vacation (“What good is this/ when other students were flying/ and sailing”), the only one whose lunch box is filled with food “too strange or too unfamiliar for others to love as you do.” Without prescribing sympathy, Woodson’s poetic lines give power to each child’s experience.

The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson