National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson’s stirring novel explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed. For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone’s hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he’s as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ’s house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and seems to be angry all the time. ZJ’s mom explains it’s because of all the head injuries his dad sustained during his career. ZJ can understand that–but it doesn’t make the sting any less real when his own father forgets his name. As ZJ contemplates his new reality, he has to figure out how to hold on tight to family traditions and recollections of the glory days, all the while wondering what their past amounts to if his father can’t remember it. And most importantly, can those happy feelings ever be reclaimed when they are all so busy aching for the past?

What Kind of Book is Before the Ever After

Topics

sports and recreation family parents football health and daily living diseases, illnesses, injuries, and disabilities

Genres

fiction

What Should I Know As a Parent

Families are unique and have different expectations for the books they choose to read. The following are concepts included in this book that some parents may wish to seek out or avoid.

Note that this list is not exhaustive and there may be concepts in this book that are not included or have been insufficiently or incorrectly detailed here.

Serious Subject Matter

Reviews

The Goodfather

5.00

Sobering story of a boy's professional football star father who struggles from brain damage caused by football injuries and the impact of his health problems on their idyllic life and relationship.

The New York Times

Critic

Full review

"Woodson’s evocative language . . . helps pull us through the foreboding and gives us much to contemplate."

Book Lists That Include This Book

Sakamoto's Swim Club: How a Teacher Led an Unlikely Team to Victory

Books about sports and recreation

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Books about family

Books about parents

The Creative Behind the Book

Author

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson (www.jacquelinewoodson.com) was the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and she received the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She is the 2014 National Book Award Winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir BROWN GIRL DREAMING, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award and the Sibert Honor Award. Woodson was recently named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. Her recent adult book, Another Brooklyn, was a National Book Award finalist. Born on February 12th in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline Woodson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York and graduated from college with a B.A. in English. She is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include THE OTHER SIDE, EACH KINDNESS, Caldecott Honor Book COMING ON HOME SOON; Newbery Honor winners FEATHERS, SHOW WAY, and AFTER TUPAC AND D FOSTER, and MIRACLE’S BOYS–which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award and was adapted into a miniseries directed by Spike Lee. Jacqueline is also the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature, the winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and was the 2013 United States nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.