Jacqueline Woodson & E.B. Lewis: What's Next?

Jul 2, 2011
KaaVonia Hinton

Each Kindness - K. Hinton

Award-winning collaborators Jacqueline Woodson and E.B. Lewis are working on a new picture book.

Jacqueline Woodson and E.B. Lewis have collaborated on two important picture books. The duo's last collaboration, Coming on Home Soon, earned Lewis a Caldecott Honor Award. So what's next for the author and illustrator?

Back to The Other Side

I recently talked to illustrator E.B. Lewis about The Other Side, Lewis and Woodson's first collaboration. Lewis says, "Jacqueline Woodson did such a wonderful job of making this book. She’s dealing with a touchy subject--racism--and she does it in a way that is not didactic. Hopefully, with books like The Other Side, children of various cultures can pick it up and realize the world is made up of all kinds of people. I want my books to act as teaching tools without being preachy and didactic. I want to open a child’s imagination. The Other Side gets them to open their minds to the issues the book deals with. I want them to question why it (segregation) is like that, and I want them to ask themselves, 'What am I doing to make this change?'"

New Book: Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrations by E.B. Lewis

When I spoke to Lewis, he had recently completed the thumbnails for Woodson's tentatively titled Each Kindness. Lewis explains, "I’m working on another book [Each Kindness] that is even more powerful than The Other Side. I thought Jacqueline Woodson couldn’t outdo The Other Side. This one is dealing with another type of prejudice, not racial prejudice, but class prejudice. It asks how children deal with issues of difference. The main character’s difference is the fact that she is poor. The girls shun her and when they try to make amends, it’s too late; the girl [main character] has left. This book will make you cry." At one point during Each Kindness, a teacher hands each student a stone and asks them to describe kind acts they have done. This simple activity causes the students to realize they have missed opportunities to be kind.

Lewis says, "Writing and illustrating are one and the same. Illustrations are language in a different form." Fans of Woodson and E.B. Lewis can expect an expressive new picture book.