The Year We Learned to Fly

On a dreary, stuck-inside kind of day, a brother and sister heed their grandmothers advice:Use those beautiful and brilliant minds of yours. Lift your arms, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and believe in a thing. Somebody somewhere at some point was just as bored you are now.And before they know it, their imaginations lift them up and out of their boredom. Then, on a day full of quarrels, its time for a trip outside their minds again, and they are able to leave their anger behind. This precious skill, their grandmother tells them, harkens back to the days long before they were born, when their ancestors showed the world the strength and resilience oftheirbeautiful and brilliant minds. Jacqueline Woodsons lyrical text and Rafael Lopezs dazzling art celebrate the extraordinary ability to lift ourselves up and imagine a better world.

Jacqueline Woodson (jacquelinewoodson.com) received a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and was the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. HerNew York Timesbestselling memoir,Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. Her books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winnerBefore the Ever After,New York TimesbestsellersThe Day You BeginandHarbor Me, Newbery Honor winnersFeathers,Show Way, andAfter Tupac and D Foster, andEach Kindness, which won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.

• Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books (January 4, 2022)
• Language: English
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• ISBN-10: 0399545530
• ISBN-13: 9780399545535
• Reading age: 5 – 8 years
• Grade level: Kindergarten – 3
• Item Weight: 1.25 pounds