Jacqueline Woodson’s Books Leap Off the Page, at BAM

Jacqueline Woodson has always seen her books while she writes them, visualizing what the characters look like, how they might speak and move. “I imagine them line by line,” she said during a recent phone interview. “I see the pictures.”

A prolific author of books for young people (and in later years, for adults), Woodson has won nearly every award possible for a children’s author: the Coretta Scott King award, a National Book award, many Newbery medals, a MacArthur grant. A few of those books have been staged, filmed or set to music. Since Woodson was named the Kennedy Center’s