Angela Johnson writes picture books, poetry, children's fiction, and young-adult novels in lyrical, compressed prose. Across forms, her work follows young people and families through grief, adoption, parenthood, war, displacement, and questions of belonging while keeping resilience and human connection in view.
Titles6
Editions12
Media3
Years covered1993–2010
Works on Favedom.com
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On a visit to her grandmother Ola, who is dying of cancer in her house in the desert, fourteen-year-old Emmie hears many stories about the past and her family history and comes to a better understanding of relatives both dead and living. The videotaping is Ola's idea--Ola, Emmie's grandma who lives in the California desert is dying of cancer. Emmie and her mother have come to "the dry" to pack up Ola's house and take her back to a hospital in Cleveland. As Emmie starts photographing Ola's friends, she learns about her family history and their heritage. As Ola is sped off to heaven, life below is revered and celebrated.
Coretta Scott King Award–winning author Angela Johnson writes a poignant young adult novel of deception, self-discovery, and knowing what to do when truth is at hand. You never know what’s gonna come down—in Heaven.At fourteen, Marley knows she has Momma’s hands and Pops’s love for ice cream, that her brother doesn’t get on her nerves too much, and that Uncle Jack is a big mystery. But Marley doesn’t know all she thinks she does, because she doesn’t know the truth. And when the truth comes down with the rain one stormy summer afternoon, it changes everything. It turns Momma and Pops into liars. It makes her brother a stranger and Uncle Jack an even bigger mystery. All of a sudden, Marley doesn’t know who she is anymore and can only turn to the family she no longer trusts to find out. Truth often brings change. Sometimes that change is for the good. Sometimes it isn’t.
Twelve-year-old Mike -- short for Michaela -- loves the ocean. The sights, sounds, and smells of her coastal home are embedded in her very soul. But Michaela loves her brother, Red, even more. Then one day Red disappears. One minute he's there, the next...gone. No warning. No time to prepare. And Mike must come to terms with that loss or risk never finding comfort in what remains of the life she and her brother once shared.
Bobby's a classic urban teenager. He's restless. He's impulsive. But the thing that makes him different is this: He's going to be a father. His girlfriend, Nia, is pregnant, and their lives are about to change forever. Instead of spending time with friends, they'll be spending time with doctors, and next, diapers. They have options: keeping the baby, adoption. They want to do the right thing. If only it was clear what the right thing was.
Thirteen-year-old Bird leaves Cleveland for Alabama, hoping to persuade the stepfather who abandoned the family to return home. During the journey, she becomes involved in the lives of other people who are carrying losses and difficulties of their own. Bird's determination cannot erase every hurt, but her warmth and kindness create unexpected connections. The story follows how one young person's search for reunion can also help several strangers begin to heal.
After Heaven and The First Part Last, three-time Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Angela Johnson concludes her acclaimed trilogy with a poignant tale of finding where you belong and who you belong with. Shoogy left home with all her jeans still in the washer because she couldn’t think of a reason to stay. She’s not sure where she belongs, until she meets Curtis. Curtis knows for certain where he does not want to be and that’s to be back in the army. He is happy to be in Ohio, where it is quiet and he can spend time with Shoogy. But when Curtis gets orders to return to Iraq, will belonging with each other be enough to keep Shoogy and Curtis together? Angela Johnson takes us back to Heaven, Ohio in this bittersweet tale of first love found and lost.
Angela Johnson has worked as a freelance writer since 1989, moving among board books, picture books, poetry, fiction for children, and young-adult novels. She attended Kent State University and earlier worked with children through Volunteers in Service to America.
Her work repeatedly places children, teenagers, and families inside difficult transitions—adoption, elder care, death, pregnancy and parenthood, war, grief, and the search for home. The six novels recognized by the American Library Association's 2018 Margaret A. Edwards Award show how often Johnson returns to teenagers in crisis while preserving the possibility of hope and resilience.
Johnson has framed reader connection as her central mission: even when a story is tumultuous, she wants the reading experience to offer a place of safety and recognition. That intention is visible in the Heaven sequence, which links family rupture and teenage parenthood to the aftermath of war and to characters trying to decide where, and with whom, they belong.
