by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 22, 2009

There's a hidden villain in Jacqueline Woodson's book "The Other Side": racism. Children living in a segregated town are told that "that's the way things have always been." It was 2001 when Woodson wrote this story about the day when things begin to change. It's set in America's recent past, but it's a message she wanted to pass on to the next generation.

E. B. Lewis contributed some gorgeous illustrations which create the tone of an innocent childhood. There's a beautiful drawing of sunflowers in a field, with tufts of white in the background and enormous shade trees in front of a yellow house. "That summer the fence that stretched through our town seemed bigger," writes Woodson. Lewis includes the fence - far off in the background. But a little girl's mother warns "Don't climb over that fence when you play."

"She said it wasn't safe."

Woodson's text faithfully catches the child's perspective, including her questions about her mother's warning. That summer on the other side of the fence, "there was a girl who wore a pink sweater," Woodson states matter-of-factly. The white girl asks if she can join the black children jumping rope. "And my friend Sandra said no without even asking the rest of us.

"I don't know what I would have said. Maybe yes. Maybe no."

It remains a children's story, with rainy days and puddles, as the lonely white girl splashes and laughs in the rain. The black girl is named Clover, and she watches fascinated through the window of her home. "Someplace in the middle of the summer, the rain stopped," Woodson writes casually, creating a mood. "When I walked outside, the grass was damp and the sun was already high... I felt brave that day.

"I felt free."

But there's still that fence, and everything it symbolize, with its five planks filling two pages while the two girls curiously eye each other. "I got close to the fence and that girl asked me my name," Clover remembers. They talk innocently, and Clover points to her house and a blouse hanging on the laundry line. The little white girl - whose name is Annie - invites Clover to enjoy the view from the top of the fence. "'A fence like this was made for sitting on,' Annie said."

There's a strong symbolism, though it's delivered in the simplest possible way. Soon Clover is reaching her hand up to Annie's on the fence, and the girls sit there together throughout the summer. Clover's Mama surprises her daughter by simply not intervening. "That summer me and Annie sat on that fence and watched the whole wide world around us," Woodson writes. And by the end of the book, all the other children have joined her on the fence. But it's on the last page that Woodson sends her message.

"Someday somebody's going to come along and knock this old fence down," Annie says.

"Yeah," replies Clover. "Someday."

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