Jacqueline Woodson at the Free Library of Philadelphia

If you know anything about me at all, you’ll probably pick up that I’m a planner – I like to know what’s happening, when it’s happening and what is expected of me. So when I scrolling through Twitter yesterday morning and saw that Jacqueline Woodson (yes, the Jacqueline Woodson) was going to be at the Free Library of Philadelphia kicking off their One Book, One Philadelphia program, I knew I had to see her.

I checked the date – it was that evening. Now, Philly’s not far from where I live, about 20  miles, but of course trying to get into the city during rush hour on a day that started with snow and ice can be daunting. But, I decided to go for it! What was the likelihood that I’d get a chance to see her again anytime soon, especially considering that she was just named the National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature last week!

Now, if you’re not familiar with Jacqueline Woodson, she’s a prolific writer of books for kids and teens, she’s a poet and all around fabulous person. She’s a four-time Newbery Honor Award winner, National Book Award Winner, Coretta Scott King Book Award winner, was the Young People’s Poet Laureate and was recently chosen as the National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, among other awards too numerous to name.

I stopped at the bookstore grabbed a copy of Each Kindness to add to a signed copy to my personal collection, ate dinner while sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic and made it down to the city and found parking right outside the building to see Jacqueline at the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. She did a reading from both her memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming and her novel, Another Brooklyn, had an interview with WHYY’s Katie Colaneri and then took some questions from the audience.

I am so glad I made the decision to be a little more spontaneous than I usually am, I’m glad that I didn’t feel too weird about going myself and I’m glad that I was able to take this opportunity when it was presented to me. If you ever get a chance to hear Jacqueline speak, definitely go for it and if you want to know more about her ambassadorship and her theme for her time as ambassador, check out the Library of Congress’s webpage.