Book Review: All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson

Publisher’s description

# 1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Honor author Renée Watson explores friendship, loss, and life with grief in this poignant novel in verse and vignettes.

Sage’s thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dream with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn’t predictable. There is sadness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, pain, love. And even as Sage grieves, new, good things enter her life-and she just may find a way to know that she can feel it all.

In accessible, engaging verse and prose, this is a story of a girl’s journey to heal, grow, and forgive herself. To read it is to see how many shades there are in grief, and to know that someone understands.

Amanda’s thoughts

Before I tell you why I love this book, let me point out two things: one, this book has a main character who is 13, which makes it one of those elusive upper middle grade books/young teen lit so many of us are clamoring for. And two, the page count for this novel in verse is 208, which is such a delight to see. Shorter books that still manage to develop such deep and beautiful stories are necessary is this world of extremely limited attention spans of a generation raised on constant action and movement on various devices.

I am always delighted to pick up a new book by Watson. And here, I read with an eye toward talking eventually more about grief and loss in children’s lives, something I wrote about for SLJ’s October cover story and will be incorporating into an upcoming presentation at Teen Lit Con in April. Sage, age 13, is reeling from the loss of her best friend, who was killed as a pedestrian in a hit and run. Sage can’t bring herself to walk down the Harlem street where it happened. In fact, Sage can’t even bring herself to use her best friend’s name, only calling her “my best friend” for nearly the whole book. Sage isn’t sure how to go on with her life, really struggling with the suddenness of the loss. She attends a grief group after school with a few other kids and really only connects with the two who also suffered sudden losses. She’s actually rather offended by the idea that those who have lost people in drawn-out ways, or lost people who were older and it was less surprising for them to die can understand what she’s going through. And, having lost a parent in a car accident, I get her. She isn’t wrong–none of us are ever wrong in how we feel about death and grief. Sage carries this burden of feeling guilty. She gets good advice and support from people in her life, particularly Aunt Ini, who tells her she still has to get up and going each day, that she will always miss her friend. It’s hard to coach a kid through grief.

Sage is doing her very best. She is devastated, but she is still moving forward each day. And if some of those days are really bad? If some of those days including meltdowns and lashing out and hurting other people’s feelings? Well, it happens. Grief can get ugly. And while life keeps going, every new thing can feel like a betrayal–new friends, a crush, experiences her best friend will never have again. Watson shows readers that grief is very complicated, that feeling all the feelings is totally okay, and that learning how to carry that loss with you, learning it’s okay to be happy and sad, is a process and is normal. This deeply moving look at grief and loss will be a comforting reminder to many that there is no roadmap for this, that we all just do the best we can.

Review copy (ARC) courtesy of the publisher

ISBN-13: 9781547605897
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication date: 02/04/2025
Age Range: 10 – 14 Years

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