Dear Reader,
I am diverging from our normal book presentations to share this amazing book with you. These are extraordinary times in our history and I felt a need to be a very small part of it. Please include The Other Side on your must read list.
The Other Side By: Jacqueline Woodson Illustrated by: E. B. Lewis
Ages: Birth through 100
I first read The Other Side right after it was first published in 2001. I remembered crying the first time that I read it and I cried again when I revisited the story this week. I cried because of how little progress has been made to tear down the fence that separates us. On the 10th anniversary of the book, the author Jacqueline Woodson expresses the same feeling, but still speaks of hope that the fence will finally come down. For the first time, I share that hope! This is not a book just for children, it is a book for all of us. As Clover and Annie sit on the fence, they imagine a fenceless world. Let’s work together and make sure that this promise comes true for them and all of us!
This is the last page of this wonderful book: “Someday somebody’s going to come along and knock this old fence down,” Annie said. And I nodded, “Yeah,” I said. “Someday.”
