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The Year We Learned to Fly

Jacqueline Woodson, Author

Rafael López, Illustrator

Imprint: Orchard Books

Publication date: May 8, 2025

Category: Picture storybooks

ISBN: 9781408373590

One rainy day, a bored brother and sister listen to their wise grandmother’s advice: “Use those beautiful and brilliant minds of yours. Lift your arms, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and believe in a thing.”

And before they know it, their imagination takes them on a beautiful adventure through ancestry, strength and resilience. They dream, they believe and eventually . . . they fly.

A poignant tale about the power of imagination, from the award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson.

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is one of the US’s most acclaimed contemporary authors for young people. She first came to attention with her multi-award-winning book Brown Girl Dreaming, a memoir in blank verse of her childhood and family life moving between the American South and New York. She was the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017 and the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for 2018-19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020.