L.A. has the largest jail system in the country.

You got people that been in jail just like one time and their life can't get nothing because of whatever mistake they made.

I stole some ground turkey because I wanted to feed my family. We was hungry.

Off the Block. Stories tracing the path from city block to cell block and back.

Find it now at kCRW.com or subscribe on iTunes.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Boots.

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books? From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael

Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm. Today, I am incredibly excited because this is the first

time I'm meeting Jacqueline Woodson. Her book is called Another Brooklyn. It's a novel. I haven't

really known her work all that much before because it's thought to be, or it's called young

adult work, and this is said to be her first adult novel in 20 years.

But I have to say now having read a bunch of the stuff,

I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

I think it's all of a very high level,

all of profound emotion, and all looking for a definition of truth that's important,

whether you're a young adult reader or an old adult reader, these are books to go to

where difficult truths are arrived at. They're not dictated.

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