Jacqueline Woodson

As an author, Woodson's known for the detailed physical landscapes she writes into each of her books. She places boundaries everywhere—social, economic, physical, sexual, racial—then has her characters break through both the physical and psychological boundaries to create a strong and emotional story. She is also known for her optimism. She has said that she dislikes books that do not offer hope. She has offered the novel Sounder as an example of a "bleak" and "hopeless" novel. On the other hand, she enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Even though the family was exceptionally poor, the characters experienced "moments of hope and sheer beauty". She uses this philosophy in her own writing, saying: "If you love the people you create, you can see the hope there."

As a writer she consciously writes for a younger audience. There are authors who write about adolescence or from a youth's point of view, but their work is intended for adult audiences. Woodson writes about childhood and adolescence with an audience of youth in mind. In an interview on National Public Radio (NPR) she said, "I'm writing about adolescents for adolescents. And I think the main difference is when you're writing to a particular age group, especially a younger age group, you're — the writing can't be as implicit. You're more in the moment. They don't have the adult experience from which to look back. So you're in the moment of being an adolescent ... and the immediacy and the urgency is very much on the page, because that's what it feels like to be an adolescent. Everything is so important, so big, so traumatic. And all of that has to be in place for them."

In November 2014, Daniel Handler, the master of ceremonies at the National Book Awards, made a joke about watermelons when Woodson received an award. In a New York Times Op-Ed published shortly thereafter, "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke," Woodson explained that "in making light of that deep and troubled history" with his joke, Daniel Handler had come from a place of ignorance. She underscored the need for her mission to "give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past."

Only The Notebooks of Melanin Sun, Miracle's Boys and Locomotion are written from a male perspective. The rest of Woodson's works feature female narrators. However, her 2009 short story "Trev", published in How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity, features a transgender male narrator.

Announcing her as recipient of the ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award in 2006, the citation of the panel of librarians chair stated: "Woodson's books are powerful, groundbreaking and very personal explorations of the many ways in which identity and friendship transcend the limits of stereotype."

Filmmaker Spike Lee and others made Miracle's Boys into a miniseries, airing in 2005.

In her 2003 novel, Coming on Home Soon, she explores both race and gender within the historical context of World War II.

Jacqueline Woodson (born February 12, 1963) 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.