# Brown Girl Dreaming

**Author:** Jacqueline Woodson
**Lexile:** 990L
**Grade range:** Grades 4–8
**Age range:** 10–14
**First published:** 2014
**Page count:** 336
**Genre:** Middle Grade Memoir in Verse
**ISBN-13:** `9780399252518`
**ISBN-10:** `0399252517`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/brown-girl-dreaming
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Woodson's National Book Award-winning verse memoir traces her childhood between South Carolina and Brooklyn during the civil rights era. Newbery Honor in 2015, the book is widely assigned in 5th-8th grade for its accessible introduction to memoir-in-verse and its lived perspective on civil rights history.

## Themes

- civil rights era
- African American childhood
- writing identity
- family
- verse memoir
- religious community

## Content notes

- historical racism
- death of grandparent

Common Sense Media age recommendation: 10+

## Where this book is assigned

### Common Core State Standards (ELA)

- **recommended** · 5th grade — [source: CCSS ELA grades 4-5 verse-memoir Newbery Honor](https://achievethecore.org/page/2699)
- **recommended** · 5th grade · South Carolina — [source: SC ELA grade 5 — SC-set memoir alignment](https://ed.sc.gov/)
- **recommended** · 6th grade — [source: CCSS ELA grades 6-8 civil rights memoir exemplar](https://achievethecore.org/page/2699)
- **recommended** · 6th grade · New York — [source: NY Next Gen Standards grade 6 — Brooklyn-set memoir](https://www.nysed.gov/)

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