If You Come Softly

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Once again, Woodson (I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This) handles delicate, even explosive subject matter with exceptional clarity, surety and depth. In this contemporary story about an interracial romance, she seems to slip effortlessly into the skins of both her main characters, Ellie, an upper-middle-class white girl who has just transferred to Percy, an elite New York City prep school, and Jeremiah, one of her few African American classmates, whose parents (a movie producer and a famous writer) have just separated. A prologue intimates heartbreak to come; thereafter, sequences alternate between Ellie's first-person narration and a third-person telling that focuses on Jeremiah. Both voices convincingly describe the couple's love-at-first-sight meeting and the gradual building of their trust. The intensity of their emotions will make hearts flutter, then ache as evidence mounts that Ellie's and Jeremiah's "perfect" love exists in a deeply flawed society. Even as Woodson's lyrical prose draws the audience into the tenderness of young love, her perceptive comments about race and racism will strike a chord with black readers and open the eyes of white readers ("Thing about white people," Jeremiah's father tells him, "they know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white"). Knowing from the beginning that tragedy lies just around the corner doesn't soften the sharp impact of this wrenching book. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)

VOYA - Alison Kastner

For Ellie and Jeremiah it is love at first sight in this understated love story. Though the couple comes from different backgrounds, both have strange home lives. After his parents' divorce, Jeremiah's dad moved across the street and Jeremiah now spends his time going between his mother's and father's apartments. Ellie lives in a very large apartment with her mother and father, and they all seem to inhabit separate corners of a space that once housed a large family. Ellie's relationship with her mother, who has left the family twice, is strained. Estranged from both their families, Ellie and Jeremiah become the perfect couple, providing the security and love that they feel is lacking at home. Of course there is a complication: Ellie is white and Jeremiah is black. Ellie thinks that racism is a thing of the past, until she is heartbroken to discover that her favorite sister is racist. The couple is also surprised when they face hostility from perfect strangers, but they persevere and their relationship blossoms. This sweet story is filled with a sense of foreboding. In fact, Jeremiah is shot by a police officer who mistakes him for a crime suspect. In truth, Jeremiah is shot because he is an African American who is running (dribbling his basketball) after dark. While such incidents are all too common, this reader found herself wishing that Woodson had ended on a more optimistic note-the "happily-ever-after" ending is not always the predictable one-and wanted to know if Jeremiah and Ellie could have endured in the face of so much opposition. One positive note: Ellie forms a relationship with Jeremiah's mother and together they mourn their loss. The gentle and melancholy tone of this book makes it ideal for thoughtful readers and fans of romance. VOYA Codes: 4Q 3P M J (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, Will appeal with pushing, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8 and Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9).

KLIATT

To quote KLIATT's Jan. 1999 review of the hardcover edition: Woodson, author of the acclaimed From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun and other YA novels, once again tackles issues of bigotry and family in this poignant story about a tragic romance. Fifteen-year-old Jeremiah (called Miah) lives in a comfortable black neighborhood in Brooklyn, alternating between the homes of his separated parents and disturbed about their upcoming divorce. His father is a famous filmmaker and his mother is a renowned novelist, and Miah's father has convinced him that attending a fancy prep school in Manhattan would be a good idea. There Miah meets Ellie, a white, Jewish girl who's also new to the school. Ellie comes from a privileged background too, but her mother has abandoned the family twice and Ellie, the baby of the family and the only one left at home, doesn't trust her to stick around. Miah and Ellie fall deeply in love, and then must cope with the often-negative reactions of others to their interracial relationship, culminating in a terrible accident in Central Park. The title, from a poem by Audre Lorde, invites readers to see the world from Miah's and Ellie's eyes, as they tell their stories in alternating chapters and share their wonder and joy at first love and their conflicted feelings toward their families. Woodson succeeds in letting us into their hearts, and the story is gracefully told. An ALA Best Book for YAs and a BCCB Blue Ribbon Book. KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 1998, Penguin/Puffin, 184p, 18cm, 97-32212, $4.99. Ages 13 to 18. Reviewer: Paula Rohrlick; July 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 4)

The ALAN Review - Diana Mitchell

15-year-old Jeremiah usually deals with the constant pressure of choosing which of his separated parents to spend time with by losing himself in basketball. But this year is different. His father insists on sending him to a private school so Jeremiah has to deal with being one of only a handful of black students there and one of a few black players on the team. Then he meets Ellie, a Jewish girl at his school. They lock eyes and feel an instant affinity for each other. Told in alternating chapters by Ellie and Jeremiah, this is a gently told story of two teens in a biracial relationship and what happens to them and their families because of the assumptions made about black males in our society. The language is so beautiful and the attention to detail so focused that I felt I had been dropped into their lives and knew them and their families. The tragic ending makes a very strong statement about what its like to be a black male in America and what can happen when stereotypes are the basis for behavior towards others. The powerful message is haunting and I find myself turning the events of the book over and over again in my mind.

Kirkus Reviews

In a meditative interracial love story with a wrenching climactic twist, Woodson (The House You Pass on the Way, 1997, etc.) offers an appealing pair of teenagers and plenty of intellectual grist, before ending her story with a senseless act of violence. Jeremiah and Elisha bond from the moment they collide in the hall of their Manhattan prep school: He's the only child of celebrity parents; she's the youngest by ten years in a large family. Not only sharply sensitive to the reactions of those around them, Ellie and Miah also discover depths and complexities in their own intense feelings that connect clearly to their experiences, their social environment, and their own characters. In quiet conversations and encounters, Woodson perceptively explores varieties of love, trust, and friendship, as she develops well-articulated histories for both families. Suddenly Miah, forgetting his father's warning never to be seen running in a white neighborhood, exuberantly dashes into a park and is shot down by police. The parting thought that, willy-nilly, time moves on will be a colder comfort for stunned readers than it evidently is for Ellie. Miah's melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson's previous books. (Fiction. 11-13)