Some fun facts about Jacqueline Woodson include:
- She can only write in her notebook turned sideways. As a child, she even wrote in it turned upside down.
- She can double-dutch (jump rope).
- Fall is her favorite season.
- She shares a birthday with Abraham Lincoln and Judy Blume.
- When she was a toddler, she did a series of advertisements for Alaga Syrup in Ebony Magazine, which was technically her first job even though she wasn't in school yet.
- Her favorite childhood books were Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" and Mildred D. Taylor's "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry."
- She was inspired to write by seeing Black women writers and authors like James Baldwin, Virginia Hamilton, Nikki Giovanni, and Toni Morrison.
- Woodson served as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017 and as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature from 2018 to 2019.
- She won the MacArthur Fellow "genius grant" in 2020.
- Her autobiographical work "Brown Girl Dreaming" won the National Book Award in 2014.
- She started her writing career working helping homeless and runaway children and writing short stories for children's reading tests.
These highlight her unique personality, early influences, accomplishments, and dedication to writing for young people.
