Each Kindness (review)

Chloe, Kendra, and Sophie are a tight trio, and when new girl Maya arrives, with her shabby clothes and obvious desperation, they resist her overtures of friendship. As winter turns to spring, the world thaws, but Chloe and her friends refuse to. When their teacher leads an exercise about kindness and its effects, Chloe realizes she can’t think of any kind act she’s ever done, and when Maya leaves her classroom never to return, Chloe realizes that she’ll never be able to rectify her rejection. With its absence of redemptive possibility, there’s an Old Testament somberness to this story, and Woodson’s fluid writing and deft particularity makes the girls’ bullying rebuffs of Maya absolutely heartbreaking. There’s some contrivance here, though, in how unrelievedly and publicly awful the class is to Maya (even when she first arrives and the teacher tells them to greet her, “most of us were silent”), and how the teacher’s sensitive lesson about kindness only appears when it’s too late. In his watercolors, Lewis embraces the effects of light like an Impressionist, while his creative, often cinematic uses of point of view add resonance to the story. The art minimizes the visible differences between Maya and the rest of the multicultural cast of kids (which may confuse kids who aren’t seeing what Chloe sees but also will highlight the capriciousness of the class’ exclusion), while it also makes Chloe, with her pouty stubborn scowl and pink-edged sneaker, into a very plausible and realistic little girl. This is perhaps best treated as a parable to provoke discussion, and it certainly offers an alternative view to rosier stories of forgiveness and bullyvictim friendships.