It's a new school year, and Lonnie Collins Motion (Locomotion --- get it?) has a new teacher. Unfortunately, Ms. Cooper isn't quite as nice as his old teacher. When Lonnie tells her he's a poet, she says he can't be because he has never published a book. Thankfully, Lonnie is too smart to take her seriously. His former instructor, Ms. Marcus, told him he was a poet simply because he writes poems, and Lonnie knows that's the case.

Lonnie is also a letter writer. He and his sister, Lili, live in different foster homes. They’ve been in this situation for a while, ever since their parents died. Since they can't see each other every day like most siblings do, Lonnie writes letters and plans to give them all to Lili one day so she can read everything about him, his foster home and their family before they had to go their separate ways.

Lonnie's correspondences cover everything --- how hard it is to do well at school, what it's like making and keeping friends, and the difficulties of going on when painful memories of the past keep cropping up. Even when good things happen, Lonnie's letters seem mostly sad, especially when his kind foster mother, Miss Edna, receives bad news about one of her sons, a young man who has been away fighting in the war. Jenkins comes home injured and angry.

Surprisingly, though, it is the sadness in both Jenkins and Lonnie that allow them to find common ground. And it gives Lonnie the chance to see that family can mean a lot of things, and a person can have more than one.

PEACE, LOCOMOTION is the sequel to Jacqueline Woodson’s LOCOMOTION, a National Book Award finalist and a story told entirely in poems. While it would be great to have read the first book, Lonnie is such a good writer that you learn all you need to know from his letters to Lili. Whenever he produces a poem, he also includes it in these correspondences. Lonnie probably isn't the loudest kid in school, but he pours his heart out in his writing. His letters and poems are as personal as diary entries.

If you've read other novels by Woodson, you know how talented she is. Despite its short length and slightly thin plot, PEACE, LOCOMOTION is another excellent, emotional and honest book that will appeal to a variety of readers.

    --- Reviewed by Sarah Hannah Gómez (hannahgomez@gmail.com)

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