Jazmin's Notebook, by Nikki Grimes, is the story of a fourteen-year-old African American girl who lives with her sister CeCe, who is six years older than she is. Jazmin's parents divorced when she was very young. Her mother became depressed, spiraled into alcoholism and eventually suffered from a mental disorder that required extensive hospitalization. Their father could only take them in on a short-term basis. As a result, the girls were sent to live with relatives or were placed in foster homes at various times. There was other tragedy in the girls' young lives. Their father died in a car accident after lingering in a coma for several days.

When Jazmin was thirteen, she was living with her mother. Although her condition had improved for a brief time, she had another bad spell and Jazmin jumped at the chance to move out and live with her sister who left home when she was sixteen. The girls had a strong bond and CeCe was always very protective of her younger sister. They struggled to make ends meet and had many worries about their safety because of the crime-ridden area of the Washington Heights section of New York City where they lived. They literally had to dodge bullets from a drive-by shooting and always had to be wary of the drug addicts and other shady characters who lived in the area.

Jazmin regretted that she didn't have a normal childhood like many of her friends. There were no baby pictures of her and no memories of birthday parties. She decided to keep a notebook, similar to a log or diary, of the events she experienced and the people she met. The writing came easy to her and she was quite a poet and had aspirations to become a writer. She was a straight A student and planned to go to college and escape her past and the seedy neighborhood in which she lived. A narrow-minded school counselor signed Jazmin up for classes that were technical in nature because "a person like" Jazmin would do better if she learned a skill. Jazmin was not shy about straightening the counselor out. She was planning to go to college and she wasn't going to let anything or anyone crush that dream.

In the end, the girls moved to a nicer and safer neighborhood. But Jazmin refused to give up her school and her friends and planned to commute everyday to school. After moving more times than she could recall, she had finally established some roots and wasn't about to leave them. Jazmin left the last page of her notebook blank. It represented her future which was finally hopeful and was yet to be written.