Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Finalist: AIN’T BURNED ALL THE BRIGHT By Jason Reynolds
Introduction by Heavy Medal Award Committee Member Jennifer Whitten
AIN’T BURNED ALL THE BRIGHT is a collage of words and images resulting from a collaboration between Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin (former college roommates and also authors of My Name Is Jason. Mine Too.: Our Story. Our Way). During the pandemic, Griffin kept a moleskin sketchbook as a means of processing everything that was happening during the strange year of 2020. While speaking on the phone one day, Griffin said the sketches had become “sort of like an oxygen mask.”
That comment and image was the spark of what became AIN’T BURNED ALL THE BRIGHT, a mash-up of three long sentences separated by three breaths, with a text-image interplay that makes this book a unique reading experience. Don’t be fooled by the brevity of the text: Reynolds’s use of sensory imagery, repetition of phrases, and relatable metaphors effectively tell the story of a Black family suffocating inside their home during the summer of 2020 and struggling to find their breath, each in their own way.
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In the first breath, the characters unfold across the pages: a mother glued to the news on the television, a brother who won’t move from the video game console, a sister planning to attend a protest for George Floyd’s murder, and our unnamed narrator, an observer, taking in both the news coverage with stories of police brutality and of people fighting for the “freedom to breathe.”
In the second breath, we meet the father of the family isolated from his family suffering from a respiratory illness (COVID-19?) that has him coughing and coughing, struggling through each breath, but fighting because “when he sees me he smiles because the fever ain’t burned all his bright up yet.”
In breath three, the young narrator is frustrated with the wait game where he begins his search for an oxygen mask. Through the search, the protagonist recognizes that we can find our breath in the simple things and people in our lives.
“worry is worn like a knit sweater in summer and can’t nobody breathe in a knit sweater in summer a turtleneck wrapped around my whole family our necks caught in a tunnel of too much going on and if feels like I’m the only person who can tell we’re all suffocating so I get up and look for an oxygen mask around the house”
Reynold’s prose is rhythmic and urgent. I read and listened to this book at least 20 times so far, and each time I discover something new about the genius of Reynold’s style, in addition to taking in how the visual images created by Griffin add to our interpretation of the text. 2020 was really the “strangest year of our lives” and I am grateful for the collaboration of Reynolds and Griffin as a reminder of all that we went through and continue to in the fight for “freedom to run and be out of breath and catch it again.”
Heavy Medal Award Committee members and others are now invited to discuss this book further in the Comments section below. Please start with positive observations first; stick to positives until at least three comments have been posted or we reach 1:00 pm EST. Let the Mock Newbery discussion begin!
Filed under: Book Discussion, Heavy Medal Mock
About Emily Mroczek-Bayci
Emily Mroczek (Bayci) is a freelance children’s librarian in the Chicago suburbs. She served on the 2019 Newbery committee. You can reach her at emilyrmroczek@gmail.com.
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How does Jason Reynolds manage to evoke characters, theme and setting in 3 sentences? Well it IS Jason Reynolds! Despite the economy of words, he intentionally repeats “why my mother won’t change the channel and why the news won’t change the story and why the story won’t change into something new instead of the every-hour rerun about how we won’t change the world.” He captures the year we ALL experienced: stuck-the new is stuck in a repetitive cycle, they are stuck inside, the brother tied to his video game and his sister stuck on the phone, their father is stuck quarantined in the bedroom. Jennifer-I’m so glad you quoted the comparison to a turtleneck-that was a beautiful example- a great metaphor of how we were stuck in 2020. I believe he does leave us with a hopeful message as the family looks up -there’s a hint of a smile and end with a bit of humor as he wonders if maybe the remote is lost!
“And I’m sitting here wondering why / my mother won’t turn the channel / and why my father keeps coughing / from the other room…”
Great intro, Jennifer. I read the book in print once and listened to it twice; I think the audio is especially powerful, and easy enough to follow even though the three sentences are quite long. Reynolds captured the claustrophobia and uncertainty of the early pandemic days and Black Lives Matter movement, as the narrator observes his mother glued to the TV news, his sister preparing for a protest (“…what to pack / to make sure / they can breathe out there”), his brother playing video games, and his father quarantined in the bedroom, coughing.
I found myself ‘Catching my Breath’, ‘Holding my Breath’ and then ‘Breathing Deeply’, just like the protagonist in this book, realizing that there might still be “some bright” navigating through this time in history: Black Lives Matter, pandemic, division and misinformation, if only we can find the remote, reorientate our GPS.
Reynolds certainly packed a powerful message and immerses the reader into the frustrations and confusion of 2020 in three sentences. It felt so personal, like I was reading his personal diary.
This is such a stunning endeavor of a book. I wish the publisher had been able to publish it in a moleskin because I could just feel the texture radiating off the page. While I worried, at first, it would be too ‘COVID-y” of a book to have lasting impact, I think Reynolds’ words transcend. The rhythm of the book, the way it just breaths off the page and into the reader, is stunning.
So I tried something with this book–I intentionally did NOT look at the pictures. It was hard but I wanted to view the text for text’s sake. And as I expected, Jason Reynolds’ was incredible. Truly, he managed to capture all of the feels around 2020 (and longing for the news narrative to change and just shut off). It was a text that touched on Covid, Black Lives Matter, and so much more.
However, while I definitely believe it stands on its own text wise, I do believe the illustrations really help immerse the reader into 2020. Some people use words to capture emotions; others use pictures. I believe they both belong.
I asked myself how is it possible that three sentences can transport you entirely into a text? I didn’t think it was possible, but of course for Jason Reynolds it is. Even without the stunning pictures, the words he writes and the meaning they convey truly captures this moment in history. I think Reynolds sticks to theme so well in this book. Everything is tightly connected and he returns to the theme of breath each chapter.
I was impressed with the use of breath throughout as well. I definitely believe Reynold’s words pack a punch even without the pictures. To capture the feelings of 2020 so succinctly yet powerfully puts this book near the top of my list.
This book felt like a great art installation. It just washes over you and maybe you don’t get the entire meaning of every thing, but you understand something deeper instead about the artist. I can’t remember the last time I felt so transported like that by a book before. The visuals definitely help with that and if you take them away this would not have been as impactful, but they work so well in-tandem together that it’s truly magical how this piece works. A top pick for me.
A few people have said this already, but this is certainly an immersive read, one that really gets to the core of way many of us felt through much of 2020. The text and the illustrations work together to create this sense of urgency, this sense of hopelessness and eventually, this sense of hope. The rhythm of this text is extraordinary! The combined use of line breaks, page turns and cut-out words create this urgent, forward sense of motion. Because there are few words on each page, the page turns are constant and almost create this frenetic feel. I also am quite impressed by level of plot and character development, considering the economy of language. We get a real sense of the narrator’s personality through the repeated phrases at the beginning of each section. A truly remarkable collaboration!
I am late to the table on this one but felt that I wanted to acknowledge this book as powerful, important, and immersive. The economy of language enables it to be accessible to struggling older readers who still feel and think like their peers but may have trouble accessing feelings and themes through literature on their own reading level. There are alot of kids who will love this book, as I did.
I think this is a very powerful book and the presentation is done quite well. You really get to feel the emotions and anguish they feel. I like how the text seemed to be jus cut and taped from another price of paper it made the book fell less polished more raw but that really fits with the text and story. Wen I realised this was another pandemic book I was unsure because I was tired of hearing about the pandemic but I think this book was done so well I didn’t mind. Defently a unique timely book.