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Summary
Summary
When Lonnie was seven years old, his parents died in a fire. Now he's eleven, and he still misses them terribly. And he misses his little sister, Lili, who was put into a different foster home because "not a lot of people want boys-not foster boys that ain't babies." But Lonnie hasn't given up. His foster mother, Miss Edna, is growing on him. She's already raised two sons and she seems to know what makes them tick. And his teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper.
Told entirely through Lonnie's poetry, we see his heartbreak over his lost family, his thoughtful perspective on the world around him, and most of all his love for Lili and his determination to one day put at least half of their family back together. Jacqueline Woodson's poignant story of love, loss, and hope is lyrically written and enormously accessible.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The kinetic energy of the aptly named Locomotion (the nickname of Lonnie Collins Motion) permeates the 60 poems that tell his sad yet hopeful story. Lonnie's first poem sets up a conflict familiar to anyone who has attempted creativity: despite the cheering of his teacher, Ms. Marcus ("Write it down before it leaves your brain," she says), as he begins to write, Lonnie hears the critical voice of his foster mother ("It's Miss Edna's over and over/ Be quiet!"). As Lonnie explores poetry's various forms throughout this brief yet poignant and occasionally humorous volume, he also reveals Miss Edna's kindness toward him in the little things she says and does ("The last time Miss Edna came home and found me/ crying She said Think/ about all the stuff you love, Lonnie"). Gradually Lonnie reveals that at age seven, his parents died in a fire, leaving him and his younger sister, Lili, orphaned. Lili was adopted, yet Lonnie figures out a way to visit her regularly. The gradual unfolding of his life's events intermingle with his discoveries about poetry as a form, from haiku to sonnets ("Ms. Marcus says "sonnet" comes from "sonnetto"/ and that sonnetto means little song or sound/ It reminds me of that guy's name Gepetto/ the one who made Pinocchio from wood he found") to the epistle poems he writes to his father and to God. Woodson, through Lonnie, creates (much as Sharon Creech did with the boy narrator in Love That Dog) a contagious appreciation for poetry while using the genre as a cathartic means for expressing the young poet's own grief. Ages 10-up. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) ""You don't just get to write a poem once / You gotta write it over and over and over / until it feels real good to you / And sometimes it does / and sometimes it doesn't / That's what's really great / and really stupid / about poetry."" Like Jack in Sharon Creech's Love That Dog (rev. 11/01), fifth-grader Lonnie has a teacher who introduces him to poetry and makes him believe in his writing. Woodson, however, more ably convinces us that her protagonist really does have a gift. The sixty poems are skillfully and artfully composed--but they still manage to sound fresh, spontaneous, and believably those of an eleven-year-old. Lonnie experiments with form, including sonnets, haiku, and epistle poems, but his poems are mostly free verse, and while the line breaks feel natural, Woodson has chosen them thoughtfully and made them compelling. As for emotional content, the poems sparely, but with great feeling, convey Lonnie's gradual healing as he comes to terms with tragedy (his parents died in a fire four years ago) and with his present situation (his younger sister has been adopted, while he lives in a foster home). Named for the sixties dance hit ""Locomotion,"" Lonnie Collins Motion writes poems that aptly contain, just as the song says, ""a little bit of rhythm / And a lotta soul."" The accessible form of this narrative will attract readers; Woodson's finely crafted story of heartbreak and hope won't let them go. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 3^-6. Lonnie is grieving and angry about the loss of his parents in a fire four years ago and about his subsequent separation from his beloved little sister, who is in foster care. He expresses his feelings in his fifth-grade poetry-writing class, encouraged by his wonderful teacher Ms. Marcus. In a series of free-verse poems and more formal verse, such as haiku and sonnets, he writes about his life and about the writing that "makes me remember." The framework of the story is fairy-tale idyllic--perfect family before the fire; happy-ever-after foster family by the end of the book--but the poetry is simple and immediate, true to the voice of the lost kid who finds himself with caring people and with words. The line breaks make for very easy reading, and Lonnie talks about those line breaks and about poetry forms, making this ideal for use in classrooms where students are reading and writing poetry. From rap to haiku, Woodson shows and tells that poetry is about who we are. --Hazel Rochman
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Lonnie Collins Motion (Lo-Co-Motion) has been grieving the accidental death of his parents for four years. Now 11, he works through his grief by writing poetry with encouragement from his teacher who understands the nature of his poetic gift and the cathartic necessity of getting him to express his feelings through it. Bit by bit, listeners learn about Lonnie: the deaths of his parents in an electrical fire at their home; the twist of fate that spared Lonnie and his sister; his hard-knock stint as a "throw-away boy" in a group home; the foster home he now lives in with loving caretaker, Miss Edna; and the longing he feels to be reconnected with his sister. In her novel (Penguin, 2003), Jacqueline Woodson uses various forms of poetry, such as haiku, sonnet, and free verse, to convey the boy's range of emotions. Dion Graham gives Lonnie's lyrical voice a gravelly and deep tone, perfectly conveying his feelings. A powerful, heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful story.-Jennifer Verbrugge, Dakota County Library, Eagan, MN (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Count on award-winning Woodson (Visiting Day, p. 1403, etc.) to present readers with a moving, lyrical, and completely convincing novel in verse. Eleven-year-old Lonnie ("Locomotion") starts his poem book for school by getting it all down fast: "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! . . . So this whole book's a poem because poetry's short and / this whole book's a poem 'cause Ms. Marcus says / write it down before it leaves your brain." Lonnie tells readers more, little by little, about his foster mother Miss Edna, his teacher Ms. Marcus, his classmates, and the fire that killed his parents and separated him from his sister. Slowly, his gift for observing people and writing it down lets him start to love new people again, and to widen his world from the nugget of tragedy that it was. Woodson nails Lonnie's voice from the start, and lets him express himself through images and thoughts that vibrate in the different kinds of lines he puts down. He tends to free verse, but is sometimes assigned a certain form by Ms. Marcus. ("Today's a bad day / Is that haiku? Do I look / like I even care?") As in her prose novels, Woodson's created a character whose presence you can feel like they were sitting next to you. And with this first novel-in-verse for her, Lonnie will sit by many readers and teach them to see like he does, "This day is already putting all kinds of words / in your head / and breaking them up into lines / and making the lines into pictures in your mind." Don't let anyone miss this. (Fiction. 9-13)