what are some fun facts about jacqueline woodson

June 28, 2026

Jacqueline Woodson has shared a lot of charming, very human details about herself that make great “fun facts.” Here’s a friendly Quick Scoop–style rundown.

Quick Scoop: Who Is Jacqueline Woodson?

Jacqueline Woodson is an award‑winning American author best known for books like Brown Girl Dreaming , Miracle’s Boys , Feathers , and After Tupac and D Foster. She writes for children, teens, and adults, often centering Black families, memory, and history.

Quirky Personal Fun Facts

These are fun details she’s shared about herself that feel like you’re getting to know a friend.

She can only write with her notebook turned sideways ; as a kid, she even wrote in it upside down.

She writes, catches, and eats with her right hand, but does things like batting and shooting baskets with her left—basically, she’s a bit ambidextrous.

She can shake her eyeballs in bright light, which is exactly as weird and cool as it sounds.

She calls herself very, very neat… except when she isn’t, which she jokes is not always a “fun” fact.

She knows the lyrics to “about a thousand” bad 1970s songs, including old commercials and TV show theme songs.

She shares a birthday—February 12—with Abraham Lincoln and author Judy Blume.

It’s the kind of list that feels like a friend rattling off their quirks after you ask, “Okay, what’s your weirdest habit?”

Childhood, Early Life, and a Secret Ad Career

A few fun biographical nuggets that go beyond the usual “born here, moved there.”

She was born on February 12, 1963, in Columbus, Ohio, spent early childhood in Greenville, South Carolina, and then moved to Brooklyn, New York, around age seven.

As a kid, she loved reading and realized in fifth grade that writing was something she was genuinely good at.

When she was a toddler, she appeared in a series of magazine ads for Alaga Syrup in Ebony —often pictured as a school‑aged child dreaming about syrup, even though she was only about two.

These details often show up in how she writes about memory, family, the South, and Brooklyn.

Writing Habits and Style: Fun for Book Nerds

If you like process talk, her writing life is full of interesting, “nerdy‑cool” facts.

She dislikes “extra words” and has said she gets cranky when details don’t earn their place in a story.

She often writes in a very lean, precise style where every word matters and emotion is carried in small, carefully chosen details.

Her books frequently include physical and emotional boundaries—like fences, neighborhoods, social lines—that characters push against or cross.

She has said she doesn’t like stories without hope, so even when her books tackle heavy topics, there’s usually a thread of optimism running through them.

She often structures her stories in nonlinear ways, weaving timelines and perspectives together to show how people remember and experience events differently.

An example is Brown Girl Dreaming , which uses verse and memory fragments to build a whole life story.

Career Highlights That Double as “Wow” Facts

These are more “impressive” than quirky, but they’re still great fun facts to drop in a discussion.

She has written more than 30 books spanning picture books, middle grade, YA, and adult fiction, many focused on African American experiences and families.

She served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, a role that celebrates poets who write for children.

In 2018–2019, she was the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for the U.S. Library of Congress, promoting reading and stories with young readers nationwide.

In 2020, she received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, one of the most prestigious creative grants in the United States.

Her work has earned major honors like Newbery Honors and National Book Awards recognition, especially for Brown Girl Dreaming.

These recognitions also show how central she’s become to conversations about children’s and YA literature in the last decade.

Mini Forum‑Style Takeaways

If you were posting this as a forum thread about “what are some fun facts about Jacqueline Woodson,” here’s how it might look in short, shareable bits:

She writes in a notebook turned sideways and used to write upside down as a kid.

She has a kind of ambidextrous split: right‑handed for some things, left‑handed for sports.

She can shake her eyeballs in bright light.

She shares a birthday with Lincoln and Judy Blume.

She was a toddler model in Ebony ads for Alaga Syrup.

She hates “extra words” and trims her writing so every detail matters.

She doesn’t like stories that don’t offer hope.

She’s a former Young People’s Poet Laureate and a MacArthur “Genius.”

TL;DR: Jacqueline Woodson is a highly decorated author with delightfully specific quirks (sideways notebook, 1970s lyrics, eyeball‑shaking) whose work is precise, hopeful, and deeply rooted in memory, family, and Black history.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.