Remember I said, One day, we’ll be together again? I know that day is taking a lot longer to come than it should, but I still believe it’s gonna get here, Little Sister. And that’s why I’m trying to write you lots and lots. Because I love writing and I love you and when me and you are together again, I’m gonna want us to remember everything that happened when we were living apart. I’m gonna hold on to all these letters and when we’re living together again, they’re gonna be the first present I give you. A whole box of the Before Time. That’s what this is, Lili, even though I know when me and you get sad, all we think about is the other Before Time—before the fire, before we lived apart from each other. But this is a whole new Before Time. And it’s cool because we’ll be able to remember a whole other set of good things, right? So I’m writing. And I’m remembering. For me. And for you, Lili.
Also by Jacqueline Woodson
After Tupac and D Foster
Behind You
Beneath a Meth Moon
Between Madison and Palmetto
Brown Girl Dreaming
The Dear One
Feathers
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
The House You Pass on the Way
Hush
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This
If You Come Softly
Last Summer with Maizon
Lena
Locomotion
Maizon at Blue Hill
Miracle’s Boys
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.
Published by The Penguin Group.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.).
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woodson, Jacqueline.
Peace, Locomotion / Jacqueline Woodson. p. cm.
Summary: Through letters to his little sister, who is living in a different foster home, sixth-grader Lonnie, also known as “Locomotion,” keeps a record of their lives while they are apart, describing his own foster family, including his foster brother who returns home after losing a leg in the Iraq War.
[1. Foster home care—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction.
4. Peace—Fiction. 5. African Americans—Fiction. 6. Letters—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W868Pe 2009 [Fic]—dc22 2008018583
ISBN: 9781440699160
For Tashawn and Ming
And eventually, for Ryleigh
Table of Contents
Remember?
Also by Jacqueline Woodson
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Imagine Peace
Dear Lili,
Little Things by Lonnie C. Motion
Dear Lili,
Imagine Peace Again
Discussion Questions
An Excerpt from Brown Girl Dreaming
An Excerpt from Locomotion
Also by Jacqueline Woodson
Last Summer with Maizon
The Dear One
Maizon at Blue Hill
Between Madison and Palmetto
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This
The House You Pass on the Way
If You Come Softly
Lena
Miracle’s Boys
Hush
Locomotion
Behind You
Feathers
After Tupac and D Foster
POEM BOOK
This whole book’s a poem ’cause every time I try to
tell the whole story my mind goes Be quiet!
Only it’s not my mind’s voice,
it’s Miss Edna’s over and over and over
Be quiet!
I’m not a really loud kid, I swear. I’m just me and
sometimes I maybe make a little bit of noise.
If I was a grown-up maybe Miss Edna
wouldn’t always be telling me to be quiet
but I’m eleven and maybe eleven’s just noisy.
Maybe twelve’s quieter.
But when Miss Edna’s voice comes on, the ideas in my
head go out like a candle and all you see left is this little
string of smoke that disappears real quick
before I even have a chance to find out
what it’s trying to say.
So this whole book’s a poem because poetry’s short and
Write fast, Lonnie, Ms. Marcus says.
And I’m thinking Yeah, I better write fast before Miss
Edna’s voice comes on and blows my candle idea out.
ROOF
At night sometimes after Miss Edna goes to bed I go
up on the roof
Sometimes I sit counting the stars
Maybe one is my mama and
another one is my daddy And maybe that’s why
sometimes they flicker a bit
I mean the stars flicker
LINE BREAK POEM
Ms. Marcus
says
line breaks help
us figure out
what matters
to the poet
Don’t jumble your ideas
Ms. Marcus says
Every line
should count.
MEMORY
Once when we was real
little
I was sitting at the window holding my baby sister, Lili
on my lap.
Mama was in the kitchen and Daddy must’ve
been at work.
Mama kept saying
Honey, don’t you drop my baby.
A pigeon came flying over to the ledge
and was looking at us.
Lili put her hand on the glass and the pigeon tried
to peck at it.
Lili snatched her hand away and screamed.
Not a scared scream,
just one of those laughing screams
that babies who can’t talk yet like to do.
Mama came running out the kitchen
drying her hands on her jeans.
When she saw us just sitting there, she let out a breath.
Oh, my Lord, she said,
I thought you’d dropped my baby.
I asked
Was I ever your baby, Mama?
and Mama looked at me all warm and smiley.
You still are, she said.
Then she went back in the kitchen.
/
