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Harbor Me

Jacqueline Woodson (Goodreads Author)

4.31 · Rating details · 3,795 ratings · 933 reviews

Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover ...more

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Hardcover, 192 pages

Published August 28th 2018 by Nancy Paulsen Books

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Lists with This Book

The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson

The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle by Leslie Connor

Mock Newbery 2019

82 books — 158 voters

Mystery in the Mansion by Lauren Magaziner

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

The Serpent's Secret by Sayantani DasGupta

Middle Grade Novels of 2018

582 books — 591 voters

More lists with this book...

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· 3,795 ratings · 933 reviews

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Jul 11, 2018 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

I don't often read books targeted for the middle school reader, but this is Woodson and I love how she tackles difficult subject. She does the same here, portraying six eleven and twelve year olds, all a different ethnicity, and from different backgrounds. All six have a harder time academically in school, for a few it is the language barrier, for another, not being able to be still. They are in an experimental classroom, and have an amazing teacher who sees a need, and fills it the best way. Sh ...more

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Sep 01, 2018 Laurie Anderson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: best-of-the-best, middle-grade, literaryish, racial-justice

This book has EVERYTHING - love, family, friends, middle school transitions, and the devastating realities faced by so many of our children in this country. It brought me tears, goosebumps, and gratitude that I'm alive in a world with people like Jackie Woodson.

Seriously - buy copies for your libraries and every family you know!

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Jul 07, 2018 Katie B rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc, fiction, first-to-read, new-york, middle-grade, read-in-2018

For a middle grade novel that is less than 200 pages, this story manages to cram in quite a few serious subjects including race, imprisonment, deportation, and the death of a parent. The ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), is a place where 6 students in a special learning class get to meet every Friday unsupervised for an hour. They are allowed to talk about whatever is on their minds and throughout the course of the school year they share some of their deepest thoughts and fears.

There was ...more

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Feb 16, 2019 Kiera rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019, contemporary, ya

Six kids. A room to talk.

For a whole school year six kids go into a room where they are to talk to each other. Throughout the course of this book they reveal stories about their diverse backgrounds.

Harbor me was great. I flew through this book, it is quite short but I loved every bit about it. This is the first book of Jacqueline Wood son's that I have read...I know right? She's such a great well-known author and I hope to read more from her in the future.

Harbor me stood out to me specificall ...more

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Aug 01, 2018 Kate Olson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: middle-grade, advanced-reader-copies

Thanks to a Kid Lit Exchange reviewer for sharing her free review copy from #NerdCampMI with us!
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There are some books that I label "teaching books" and this is most certainly one of them. Of course it's one I want kids to pick up on their own as well, but it's one I want read out loud to every 5th and 6th grade class in the US this school year. It's one that might seem so so familiar to many students, but it's also a story that may need a bit (or a lot) of adult-led discussion to truly get the m ...more

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Jun 20, 2018 Betsy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: african-american-characters, diverse, immigration, latino-characters, lower-income, middle-grade-realistic-fiction, multicultural-fiction, realistic-fiction, school-stories

A good book, whether it’s written for a nine-year-old, a nineteen-year-old, or a ninety-year-old can tilt your perspective, if only momentarily. Consider the concept of the “happy ending” and what it’s supposed to resemble. What does a real happy ending actually entail in real life? In children’s books, many times the ending of a given story is happy when day is done. In real life, something happy may happen to a child but where’s the “ending” in all that? As an author, Jacqueline Woodson doesn’ A good book, whether it’s written for a nine-year-old, a nineteen-year-old, or a ninety-year-old can tilt your perspective, if only momentarily. Consider the concept of the “happy ending” and what it’s supposed to resemble. What does a real happy ending actually entail in real life? In children’s books, many times the ending of a given story is happy when day is done. In real life, something happy may happen to a child but where’s the “ending” in all that? As an author, Jacqueline Woodson doesn’t eschew a sense of completion when you get to the end of her books. Kids could spend a long time debating whether some of her endings could be so simplified as to call them “happy” or not. Harbor Me falls into that category. The satisfaction a reader feels upon its completion is intrinsically tied to its writing, but to call this a “happy” book is to diminish it. Shooting for the moon, Ms. Woodson manages to fill this svelte title with a host of different ideas, lessons, and teachable moments. And while I don’t think it knocks it out of the park with every swing, it still manages to be one of the most interesting and well-written books of this or any other year.

It sounds like a social experiment more than anything else. Six kids are removed from their classmates and placed in their own room for a weekly discussion. Their teacher’s rules are clear. “Every Friday . . . the six of you will leave my classroom at two p.m. and come into Room 501. You’ll sit in this circle and you’ll talk. When the bell rings at three, you’re free to go home.” Putting kids in a separate space together can end with either a “Breakfast Club” situation or a Lord of the Flies conundrum. Predictably, at first the kids don’t want to say a word, but when Haley starts bringing in a hand recorder, something cracks open. Esteban is able to talk about his dad, recently taken by the police and sent back to another country. Amari about the restrictions put on black boys in America. Ashton on being one of the few white kids in their Brooklyn school. But it’s Haley herself that has the hardest time talking. About her mom’s death. Her dad’s incarceration. As the room comes together and bonds, people listen to one another and everyone gets and ending. Happy or not.

Now every children’s book that strives to imbue its pages with weight and meaning must contend with a danger that I like to call “the rogue cute”. The rogue cute is that moment where the author’s writing tips from meaningful into faux meaningful. From something that is honestly moving into something that feels like it’s trying too hard. All children’s books novelists contend with this issue to varying degrees of success. Ms. Woodson is no different, and there are times when she is more successful than others. For example, to read this book is to accept that it is, to a certain extent, an idealized situation. Six kids, mostly strangers to one another, are placed in a room where they may argue, disagree, or even tease but who are, in the end, devoid of cruelty. That’s the premise, but fortunately there’s a lot more going on here than just that. As with many children’s books, Ms. Woodson is conveying a message, but where she may seem to be painting with too broad a brush in some places, at other times she’s quite circumspect. For example, many novels for kids stress the need for us to empathize with one another. Woodson actually turns the concept of active listening into a whole book without hitting the reader over the head with the message. Each time a kid in the classroom wants to speak, everyone lets them, with a minimal amount of interruptions or interjections. Equity and diversity trainings often include a portion of the training where people are taught this very skill. Leave it Ms. Woodson to model this behavior for the next generation.

As for the six characters, some are better delineated than others. I found myself thinking that single character points (being bullied, moving, etc.) are rarely proper stand-ins for personality traits. So I do wish just a smidgen more work had gone into showing precisely why this group has bonded as tightly as it has. I understand that much of it has to do with being able to talk honestly in a safe space. I guess I just wish there’d been 215 pages rather than 192, to allow for some more of those connections. That said, Ms. Woodson has somehow managed to write a handsome novel at less than 200 pages. If she stopped and thoroughly examined in depth every character to the same extent that she follows Haley, you’d be looking at a book that was at least twice the length of the one here. And while I wish I’d been able to know more than just one thing about some of these characters, I can’t help but admire the almost Hemingway-esque succinctness of the narrative. After a while, it got me to thinking about how we meet characters in books and how we meet them in real life. When you meet someone new, your brain essentially reduces that person to their most essential parts. This is in large part because we have to find a way to consolidate and organize the information about that person as quickly as possible. Authors, in turn, have to mimic that process on the page AND for a younger readership that’s been reliant on compartmentalization for years. It takes a certain amount of talent to accomplish this. Talent Ms. Woodson has in droves.

When Ms. Woodson does delve deep into a character, the story ends up in some interesting places. Four of the kids in the room are described pretty darn well. Esteban is hard to separate from his own headspace, but I liked how you got glimpses of his life away from the page. “His nails were bitten so deep, there was a ring of pink skin at the top of his fingers. It looked painful.” Haley, meanwhile, was of interest to me because she highlighted something I’ve noticed in my own 7-year-old daughter. For children, memory can be shockingly short. I’ll read a book repeatedly for months when my kid is four only to find she has no memory of it at all at six. Haley is old enough to want more of her own forgotten memories. As she says at one point, “I’d lock every moment of memory inside a room in my brain and hope they’d multiply like cells in our bodies, until I was a grown-up all filled with memories. Maybe that’s what made us free. Maybe it was our memories. The stuff we survived, the good stuff and the bad stuff.” And it’s thoughts like this that push this book out of the ordinary into the distinguished.

In some ways, the author is working a lot of themes into a single novel. She touches on everything from the Lenape, to the reasons why black boys have to get a talk from their dads about why they can’t play with Nerf or water guns in public anymore, to the death of a dog that manages to be heartbreaking in a shockingly short amount of time. Sometimes these elements land with the reader and sometimes they don’t but you cheer on the effort. Plus, you get a lot of really good lines along the way. Lines like, “I think this is what the world is – stories on top of stories, all the way back to the beginning of time.” This sentiment is echoed later when Haley remembers a moment when a familiar painting was taken off the wall, leaving a pale green square behind. This disturbs the girl immeasurably. “… I didn’t want to believe that was all there was. That when one thing went away, just the pale ghost of it remained. I wanted to believe in stories on top of stories. Always something else. Always one more ending.” Esteban’s dad’s poems are a clever inclusion too. Essentially, they enable Ms. Woodson to slip some poetry in there that would be too mature for the kids to be able to write, but that remains simple enough for them to parse themselves.

A friend of mine mentioned to me recently that in some ways, Jacqueline Woodson’s two books for children out in 2018, Harbor Me and The Day You Begin contain similar themes. Of the two they preferred the picture book, and I do see why. For a lot of people Woodson manages an emotional resonance in those scant 32 pages that can be elusive in novels like this one. Harbor Me has strong emotional beats in the usual places, even as it doesn’t go for the jugular as often as I wanted, personally. For example, when it becomes clear that Esteban and his father are gone, I wanted more of a kick to my heart. Other choices didn’t appeal to me personally, like the fact that most of the book is a flashback from present day, right at the beginning. For the first fifteen pages I was confused and felt that the book had some difficulty finding its feet. Once it did, however, it continued forward cool and collected. That pretty much summarizes a lot of how I felt about the book. I didn’t always agree with the author’s choices, but I couldn’t argue with the results. At one point I wrote in my notes, “Oh, man. It’s good.” It is. I don’t think it’s perfect but perfection is kind of beside the point. I’ve only touched on a few of the myriad elements spotted throughout this book. Ripe for discussion, this is the book that will get kids thinking and talking and (maybe most importantly for some) listening for decades to come.

For ages 9-12. ...more

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Aug 03, 2018 Michelle rated it really liked it

Shelves: first-to-read, diaspora, 2018, booktubeathon-2018

"The hardest part of telling a story is finding the beginning."

Where do we start the dialogue in this country about acceptance and respect for others? It seems as if the collective has lost their minds. Each side is focused on rhetoric, everyone consumed by a war of "Us" versus "Them". We have forgotten that WE the people are the country that we are supposed to "indivisible" and what we are supposed to stand for is "justice and liberty for ALL".

Harbor Me is Jacqueline Woodson's first middle grad ...more

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Oct 08, 2018 Katrina rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 0-kindle, children, middle-grade, diverse

There is a tiny bit of story around the edges with the main character, but the overall plot of the book is: 6 kids sit around in a room and talk (often monologue) about Issues. That is not a story. It might work OK in verse (although a plot would still be a good thing to have), but it’s in prose. And it’s prose that keeps the impressionistic style and psychic distance of poetry, so it winds up being the worst of both worlds. It’s a girl reminiscing about people sitting around a room talking, whi ...more

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May 10, 2018 Phil Jensen rated it it was amazing

Two years ago, this country elected a leader who promised to "Make America Great Again." But what does that mean? What is America, and what does it look like when it's great? In Harbor Me, Jacqueline Woodson offers her vision of America at its best.

The plot is simple. Six tweens meet weekly to discuss their issues. Many issues emerge, with police shootings, loss of parents, and families separated by deportation getting the most coverage. The story breathes and moves naturally. The characters are Two years ago, this country elected a leader who promised to "Make America Great Again." But what does that mean? What is America, and what does it look like when it's great? In Harbor Me, Jacqueline Woodson offers her vision of America at its best.

The plot is simple. Six tweens meet weekly to discuss their issues. Many issues emerge, with police shootings, loss of parents, and families separated by deportation getting the most coverage. The story breathes and moves naturally. The characters are honestly describing their experiences and feelings, so it never feels preachy. In spite of a plot in which practically nothing happens, Woodson crafts a suspenseful page-turner. I couldn't put it down because I was dying to know how the characters would develop next.

Some of Woodson's books, such as Feathers, suffer from being about too many things at once. Not here. This book is honestly, heart-rendingly focused on the simple questions every teen must ask: "What does it mean to live in America today? Am I free? Am I safe? How do I relate to the people around me?" The characters struggle to answer these questions in ways that are vulnerable and honest. It might have been better if Woodson had kept her original title, The Dream of America; I wonder why she changed it.

You know how, in the middle of the yard, there's that huge flagpole? Ashton said. And up at the very top, there's the flag?
...On the first day I got here, I stared up at that flag thinking, this is happening all over America. All over America, kids were walking into school yards and classrooms, and the American flag was waving. All over America, kids were saying the Pledge of Allegiance, saying 'indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' All over America, we had memorized this, but did anybody know what it meant?
...It gave us a sameness. I stood in the school yard looking up at that flag and I felt something. Not just like a new kid. Not just like a white kid, but like I was a... a part of everybody running and jumping and playing all over America. Not just in our school yard. I mean- everywhere.Quote from an uncorrected galley provided by Goodreads Giveaways

Some critiques:
* The first chapter is a little too artsy and off-putting. The second chapter would have been a stronger beginning.
* I work with sixth graders with learning disabilities, and none of them are as articulate as the characters in this book. For that matter, I am less articulate than the characters in this book. However, this is not really a problem. These characters talk the way my students wish they could talk, and put into words the things my students wish they could say. My students will definitely connect with this book.

Newbery Comment Regardless of whether this book wins a Newbery, it will be a huge hit. It will be read, loved, and discussed all over America this school year, and for as long as it is relevant.

Recommended for any students who are interested in the topic. There is no objectionable content. The complexity of the language is around sixth grade, depending on the reader. ...more

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Sep 12, 2018 Gary Anderson rated it it was amazing

Jacqueline Woodson’s Harbor Me is a book for right now. We can’t always help what happens to us, and some kids are dealt really tough hands. The kids in Harbor Me are living with the realities of incarcerated parents, deportation threats, deceased parents, and mindless prejudice for all kinds of reasons. When they are sent together to the “ARTT (A Room To Talk) Room,” the only thing they have in common is their different-ness from other kids. Then a wise teacher relies on their resilience as she ...more

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Jul 21, 2018 Mary Lee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018, african-american, bully, characters, diversity, gender, grief-loss, identity, immigration, inspirational

Amazing book.
So beautifully written.
So needed for this country, our classrooms, our children, all our citizens RIGHT NOW.
So powerful...the power of talk, of getting to know others ("Others").
So honest about race and privilege and ability (dis- and otherwise) and family and grief and loss and prison and immigration. It's all there, but it's not too much. Because it really is all there, all the time.

And then I listened to the audio and fell in love again. Especially after listening to Jacqueline W ...more

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Dec 30, 2018 Philip rated it it was amazing

Stunning middle grade novel tells the tale of six students who bond over stories of their young lives. Woodson's writing combines beauty and ease, making Harbor Me an easy, artfully written book. I read this with hope, seeing the future of our beautiful country through the eyes of these six, enlightened children. Gorgeous, simple yet complex stories sure to capture your heart. Harbor Me is on the right side of history.

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Sep 26, 2018 Jessica rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, middle-grade, contemporary

I think this is a strong contender for next year's ALA awards, and with good reason. It's a slim little book, but the style is almost more poetry than prose, and each of the words and stories is lovely and clear. As these kids sit around in the old art room that their teacher gives them just to be a safe harbor where they can talk, the reader gently learns of the sorrows and joys of their lives. Two of the characters are central: Haley (the narrator) and Esteban, whose father was just taken away ...more

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Sep 15, 2018 DaNae rated it liked it

Shelves: z150-in-2018, 18-new, grade-5-reading-list, adult-friendly-kid, african-american, community, death-grief, diverse, immigrant-stories, latino

I'm having a hard time with this. The writing is so lovely and the children are dear and genuine.

But I wanted a different book, which may not be fair.

This is mainly a collection of monologues told with eloquence. The reader gets the stories, the friends share, at a distance. I can't help but wish they were shown in real time, allowing the reader a stronger connection. In the end I felt like this was more a book to teach about 'important' issues rather than strong story-telling.

I did have the ...more

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Sep 26, 2018 Desiree rated it it was amazing

Shelves: multi-cultural-juvenile-fiction

I absolutely love the idea of being a safe harbor for someone. As a librarian, I believe that libraries are safe harbors. The students in this story battled their own perception of themselves and each other to create a unique safe harbor. Each character had such rich complexity! I absolutely loved the story line.

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Jul 26, 2018 Linda Quinn rated it it was amazing

This beautifully written book gives me hope for our future, where young people who can learn to get along are our real-life superheroes.

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Aug 06, 2018 Katie Long rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned-unread

I’m not the target audience for this book at all, but I love Jaqueline Woodson so much that I requested it from Penguin First to Read even though it is meant for a much younger reader. While this one doesn’t transcend its middle grade designation the way Brown Girl Dreaming does, it does discuss important issues of cultural and socioeconomic divisions in a way that is accessible for a young reader. Woodson manages this accessibility without coming across didactic or condescending to her young au ...more

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Sep 30, 2018 Sandra rated it it was amazing

Shelves: young-adult, favorites

Lives are made up of stories, and stories are shared to know that we are not alone. Six students spend an hour once a week in a classroom, just themselves, and an indelible bond forms among these budding human beings. Throughout the year, they learn about each other’s challenges in life: family deportation, racial inequalities, loss of family members, incarcerated parent, and financial struggles. Woodson’s lyrical writing beautifully exposes the goodness of youngsters and how they can bring out ...more

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Aug 24, 2018 KC rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, immigration, friendship, crime, bullying, incarceration, neighborhood, dialog, discrimination, inclusion

When group of young Brooklyn students are given the opportunity to gather together in a safe, adult free classroom, they begin an explorative journey through dialog, poetry, revelation, and storytelling. Jacqueline Woodson taps into the most current challenges that many our youth face today with such unbridled courage and sheer eloquence.

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Nov 30, 2018 Gabrielle Schwabauer rated it it was amazing

I did not ask to cry today but here we are.

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Jul 16, 2018 Kiki Cole rated it it was amazing

I have read two very similar books in one day. Harbor Me was the better out of the two. Nothing was offensive, but it was real and it showed the effect of social matters with kids. 6 kids are put into the ARTT room aka A Room To Talk. No adults are around and it's basically free lance conversations and through each other's differences, they found an unrelated family within the four walls of this room. I thought the writing was so beautiful and poetic and I enjoyed each character's story. It was ...more

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Sep 04, 2018 Leonard Kim rated it liked it

Shelves: newbery-eligible-2018

Listened to audiobook. A couple years ago, Gary Paulsen wrote a book, Six Kids and a Stuffed Cat, that I don't remember that well but also featured a Breakfast Club-like scenario, six kids, forced together at school, not knowing each other well, but eventually talking and connecting. What was distinctive about Paulsen's book was that the material was presented both as a novel and as a play. I thought about that with Harbor Me. Woodson has style, but such a polished writing style may almost work ...more

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Oct 08, 2018 Jordan Henrichs rated it liked it

Harbor Me is so beautifully written that if it receives all the 2018-2019 children's literature accolades I'm assuming it will receive, I will have no qualms about it. Its message is a strong and relevant one, being dished out by one of children's literature's best authors.

What kept me from placing it atop my own personal list of favorites were a few things:

1) I never had a clear understanding of why these six students were chosen for this "circle." This was important to me as a reader because I ...more

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Nov 14, 2018 Destinee Sutton rated it liked it

Shelves: middle-grade, friendship, everyday-life

Woodson is one of the best (maybe the best) writers of fiction for young people. She's definitely one of my favorite authors. But I struggled to get into this book. Beautifully written, yes. Important topics and themes, yes. But it felt like a book written primarily to teach lessons, not tell a story.

Most of this book consists of a group of fifth graders sitting in a room talking. Narrator Haley is sitting in her room reflecting on the past year. Sometimes we are with her as a twelve-year-old l ...more

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Jul 12, 2018 Abby Johnson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 4th_grade, 5th_grade, 6th_grade, author-of-color, diverse, contemporary

We all need people to harbor us sometimes, when bad things happen or tragedy strikes or the world just becomes hard and lonely. In Harbor Me, six very different kids are brought together by a loving teacher to do just that. Every Friday afternoon, they gather in the old art room for an hour just to talk about whatever's on their mind. For Esteban that's his dad who was taken by immigration and is now being held far away from his family. For Amari that's the talk that his mom gave him about not p ...more

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Nov 06, 2018 Christina (A Reader of Fictions) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

1. This audiobook is full cast, and it's exceptional.
2. Harbor Me manages to be about a huge number of the major issues of the day, including immigration, imprisonment, racism, and much more, without feeling too heavy or too preachy. The characters feel so real, and it really highlights the importance of having a safe space to be able to establish open communication and build true understanding.
3. This book made me cry.

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May 12, 2018 Amaka rated it it was amazing

There are so many heavy topics covered in this novel such as immigration, racism, privilege, and parental loss. I was mesmerized by the characters and I can't get over how brilliant this story is. Haley's use of the recorder to remember her friends confessions was perfect. I love how Woodson weaved the stories so beautifully making every situation relevant to our society today.

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Jan 09, 2019 Lesley Burnap rated it it was amazing

Finally read/listened to Harbor Me. Gosh. All the feels & I might have been a little teary. Audio is exquisite with all the parts read by different kids & Jackie. So many important discussions can be kicked off by reading this book. For kids (gr 4+), teachers, adults, etc.

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Sep 14, 2018 Rita Shaffer rated it really liked it

I listened to the audiobook and it was extra special ... Jacqueline Woodson read Ms Laverne and her some reads one of the child characters... and they do the sweetest interview at the end.

This is an important book for all to read ... and I wish felt as safe as these kiddos do in the ARTT room.

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Nov 27, 2018 Kathy McC rated it it was amazing

Thank you Ms. Woodson for creating some amazing characters- so real that they leap off the page.
Thank you for the message you gave them to carry, "What I will say is harbor each other. Even strangers. Every day."
Thank you for making them friends so that they can teach us about the power of friendship. "I didn't know it would be people you barely knew becoming friends that harbored you."
Thanks for writing a story for students who are not the same as others. "We had all been in the big c ...more

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About Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson

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I used to say I’d be a teacher or a lawyer or a hairdresser when I grew up but even as I said these things, I knew what made me happiest was writing.

I wrote on everything and everywhere. I remember my uncle catching me writing my name in graffiti on the side of a building. (It was not pretty for me when my mother found out.) I wrote on paper bags and my shoes and denim binders. I chalked stories a I used to say I’d be a teacher or a lawyer or a hairdresser when I grew up but even as I said these things, I knew what made me happiest was writing.

I wrote on everything and everywhere. I remember my uncle catching me writing my name in graffiti on the side of a building. (It was not pretty for me when my mother found out.) I wrote on paper bags and my shoes and denim binders. I chalked stories across sidewalks and penciled tiny tales in notebook margins. I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.

I also told a lot of stories as a child. Not “Once upon a time” stories but basically, outright lies. I loved lying and getting away with it! There was something about telling the lie-story and seeing your friends’ eyes grow wide with wonder. Of course I got in trouble for lying but I didn’t stop until fifth grade.

That year, I wrote a story and my teacher said “This is really good.” Before that I had written a poem about Martin Luther King that was, I guess, so good no one believed I wrote it. After lots of brouhaha, it was believed finally that I had indeed penned the poem which went on to win me a Scrabble game and local acclaim. So by the time the story rolled around and the words “This is really good” came out of the otherwise down-turned lips of my fifth grade teacher, I was well on my way to understanding that a lie on the page was a whole different animal — one that won you prizes and got surly teachers to smile. A lie on the page meant lots of independent time to create your stories and the freedom to sit hunched over the pages of your notebook without people thinking you were strange.

Lots and lots of books later, I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book’s binder. Sometimes, when I’m sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing’s coming to me, I remember my fifth grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said “This is really good.” The way, I — the skinny girl in the back of the classroom who was always getting into trouble for talking or missed homework assignments — sat up a little straighter, folded my hands on the desks, smiled and began to believe in me. ...more

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Quotes from Harbor Me

“And in the night, when the dog barks at shadows, tell him
not to be afraid of what he cannot see
or the things he does not yet understand.
There is mystery everywhere.
Beneath rocks, there is damp earth
and an army of ants
planning a revolution.

Esteban stood at the front of the room, staring at the page. Then he lifted his head and looked at us. We cheered again, even louder this time. I don't know if any of us really understood his dad's poem. But for a long time after he'd finished reading, I thought about that army of ants, how they were coming together.
Like us.” — 1 likes

“If the worst thing in the world happened, would I help protect someone else? Would I let myself be a harbor for someone who needs it?’ Then she said, ‘I want each of you to say to the other: I will harbor you.’
I will harbor you.” — 1 likes

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