The format of this book isn’t growing on me, exactly, but I’m starting to try to understand the reasons why you would want to write a book like this one in the format of a verse novel. Jackie lives her life in chunks of time. She lived in the North, then the South, then back to the North and these constant changes and fluctuations can be related through verse. I still think it could have been just as effective as prose, with just different styles or inflections to simulate these changes. I also think that the verse format gives jackie a very different voice. I went on Jacqueline Woodson’s website and she said that BGD shows her learning to love creating stories, even though she had trouble reading when she was younger and I think that can also be reflected in the verse by the very simplistic feel of using so few words at a time. They tell a story but are almost adverse to the idea of being loquacious.
I still don’t like verse in general, but I think I have to change my perceptions from the last post: If you are going to write poetry, tell a story. Don’t just make an anthology, make a story that can be made sense fo by people other than yourself. Tell a comprehensive story that is easily connected and put in order. I find it pretentious when people write a poem on an apple then a poem on a wagon wheel and say they are connected and flow so well together and show true thought. Nope. That is what I call forcing a square peg into a round hole. Don’t draw connections just because you feel that you are supposed to, do it because they are there and I think that Ms. Woodson has done this the correct way… for verse.
Link to Jacqueline's Website:
http://www.jacquelinewoodson.com/category/books-ive-written/middle-grade-titles/
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