Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

Harbor Me is an engaging and important book by award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson. The story takes place in Brooklyn, New York over the course of one school year. The main characters are six 5th and 6th grade students who have been pulled together into Ms. Laverne's class because they learn differently from the other students. Haley, one of the students, narrates the powerful story.

The main action takes place in what the students call the ARTT ("A Room To Talk") room. This space is a former art classroom where Ms. Laverne sends them for the last hour of each day. She provides this space so that they can talk among themselves and get to know "the unfamiliar"...each other. Each student is quite different from the other: Esteban is an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic; Tiago is a Puerto Rican boy who feels torn between two different cultures; Ashton is a new kid, the only white student at the school, who is being bullied for being different; Amari is a black boy who is awakening to what it means to be a black man in the world; Holly is a black girl who stands out both because her parents have money and because she cannot sit still; and Haley is a bi-racial girl whose mother is dead and whose father is in prison.

Like the students, readers get to know each person intimately throughout the course of the book. In the end Jacqueline Woodson reminds us that while we are each different from the other, we are also very much the same.

I highly recommend this book to 4th-6th graders. It is a short, quick read that leaves a tremendous impression and challenges readers to "harbor" one another.

Mrs. N.