Jacqueline Woodson Books in Order

Best friends Margaret and Maizon face a summer of grief and change as Margaret mourns her father and Maizon prepares to leave Brooklyn for boarding school. It is a warm, honest beginning to a coming-of-age trilogy.

This short nonfiction book introduces Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, work, and the holiday that honors him. It is a simple starting point for young readers learning why his birthday matters.

Pregnant fifteen-year-old Rebecca moves in with twelve-year-old Afeni's family, and the two girls clash from the start. Their uneasy household becomes a sharp story about class, pregnancy, and learning to share space with someone unlike you.

Maizon leaves Brooklyn for a mostly white boarding school in Connecticut and quickly learns that opportunity can come with loneliness. Woodson captures homesickness, racism, and stubborn pride without smoothing any of it over.

Back from boarding school, Maizon returns to Brooklyn unsure whether her old neighborhood, her best friend, or even her old self will still fit. It is a thoughtful story about homecoming and growing apart.

In a divided Ohio town, Marie and Lena's unlikely friendship pushes both girls toward painful truths about race, class, and home. One secret in particular makes the story feel urgent from the inside out.

The Ghostwriter kids investigate the disappearance of a rare copy of Frederick Douglass's autobiography and other family keepsakes at a reunion. It is a fast mystery with clues, teamwork, and a strong thread of history.

This Ghostwriter companion book uses postcards, puzzles, and writing games to pull readers into the series' clue-solving world. It is less a novel than a hands-on activity book built for kids who want to play along.

Growing up in Brooklyn during the Vietnam era, a young girl watches her family strain under violence, grief, and shifting loyalties. Woodson turns family memory into a lean coming-of-age novel about what childhood notices and never forgets.

Melanin is close to his single mother until she brings home a white woman she loves, throwing his sense of family off balance. Woodson turns his resistance into a thoughtful story about love and change.

Staggerlee spends a summer in South Carolina getting to know her cousin Trout and the confusing shape of her own feelings. It is a quiet coming-of-age novel about friendship, desire, and the stories families hand down.

Teeka and her grandmother head to a big family picnic in Prospect Park, where food, gossip, and relatives make the day feel huge. It is a funny, affectionate snapshot of Black family life in one summer afternoon.

Jeremiah and Ellie fall hard for each other at fifteen, but race, pressure, and violence crowd their first love from the start. It is tender, urgent YA that never forgets how exposed young people can be.

When home becomes unbearable, Lena and her little sister Dion run away dressed as boys, hoping the road will lead somewhere safer. Woodson keeps the suspense close and the girls' fear heartbreakingly real.

When her father testifies, Toswiah and her family must vanish into witness protection and become new people in a new place. The story asks what is left of you when your name, history, and home are taken away.

After losing both parents, three brothers in Washington Heights are barely holding together. When Charlie comes home from juvenile detention, old grief and fresh anger make their fragile balance even harder to keep.

After her grandfather dies, Sarah holds onto him through the garden he tended and the lessons he left behind. It is a quiet picture book about grief, growth, and how memory keeps living in everyday things.

Clover and Annie live on opposite sides of a fence in a segregated town, but friendship keeps pulling them together. In a few pages, Woodson shows how children can question rules adults have accepted for too long.

Once a month, a girl and her grandmother make the trip to see her father in prison. Woodson turns the waiting, the bus ride, and the visit itself into a tender story about love that refuses to loosen.

After their mother leaves, Johnson and Beebee are sent to live with Aunt Gracie and slowly learn what safety can feel like. It is a gentle family story about fear, change, and the many shapes love can take.

Lonnie uses poetry in fifth grade to tell the story of his parents' deaths, foster care, and the little sister he misses every day. His voice is funny, wounded, and impossible not to root for.

Told in linked vignettes, this sequel explores the shockwaves left by a sudden loss in Ellie and Jeremiah's world. Woodson looks at grief from many angles without ever losing sight of the love underneath it.

During World War II, Ada Ruth waits with her grandmother while her mother works far away in Chicago. It is a spare, moving picture book about longing, patience, and holding on to the promise of return.

A playful collection of nursery-rhyme-style verses brings babies, sounds, and everyday household fun to life around Miss Grace's house. It is a gentle, rhythmic book made for very young readers and read-aloud time.

This picture book follows seven generations of women in Woodson's family, from slavery to freedom and beyond. Quilts, stories, and art become a way to carry history, resistance, and hope forward.

When a new boy enters Frannie's classroom, the kids around him begin asking big questions about difference, faith, and hope. Set in the 1970s, it is a quiet story that keeps opening outward.

Three girls in Queens grow up under the soundtrack of Tupac, trying to understand friendship, family trouble, and what their bigger purpose might be. It captures the ache and excitement of being eleven to thirteen.

Lonnie writes letters to his little sister Lili while they live apart in foster care, trying to stay close across distance and grief. It is a tender follow-up about family, faith, war, and the search for peace.

Gia is tired of hearing about the new baby and worries it will change her close life with Mama for good. Warm and funny, the story gently helps kids face the arrival of a new sibling.

After Hurricane Katrina, Laurel tries to build a new life while carrying grief she cannot outrun. When meth offers numbness, she is pulled into a dangerous spiral that feels like escape until it does not.

A new girl comes to school and keeps reaching out, but Chloe turns her away. When the chance for friendship is gone, Chloe is left to reckon with how far one small cruelty can travel.

A rope found in South Carolina passes through generations as one family makes its way north during the Great Migration. The story is simple on the surface and rich with history, movement, and memory.

In poems, Woodson tells the story of growing up in Ohio, South Carolina, and Brooklyn during the 1960s and 1970s. It is a memoir about family, history, and finding a writer's voice while still a child.

An anthropologist riding the subway is pulled back into memories of Bushwick, her mother's death, and the fierce friendships of girlhood. Woodson packs beauty, danger, and longing into a slim novel about memory and loss.

Six kids who learn differently are sent to talk together every Friday without adults in the room. As secrets and fears come out, they begin building the kind of trust that can hold them up.

A child walks into a room and feels different from everyone else, then learns that sharing your story can create connection. Warm and reassuring, it speaks to the lonely moment before belonging begins.

This brief memoir traces the friends, family, lovers, and losses that shaped Woodson before she met the woman she would build a life with. It is intimate, reflective, and full of memory.

At Melody's coming-of-age ceremony in Brooklyn, one family looks back at the teenage pregnancy, old dreams, and inherited history that brought them there. It is a brief, layered novel about love, class, and what gets passed down.

ZJ's father was once a football star and still his hero, but something is clearly changing. In spare verse, Woodson follows a boy facing illness, loss, friendship, and the fierce love holding his family together.

On a hot summer day in Brooklyn, neighborhood kids turn the block into a whole world of hydrants, games, forts, and freedom. It is a joyful snapshot of city childhood and the magic of being out until dinner.

Stuck indoors and shut out by other kids, a brother and sister learn from their grandmother how imagination and memory can help them rise above hard days. It turns play into a story about resilience and inherited strength.

Eleven-year-old Sage comes of age in 1970s Bushwick, where summer fires, family change, and neighborhood loss make the world feel unstable. It is a memory-rich story about friendship, community, and what children notice while a place is changing.