Ain't Burned All the Bright

Ain't Burned All the Bright is a gripping, emotional look into the life of a Black family living through what is evidently the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Artist Jason Griffin (My Name Is Jason, Mine Too) has designed this book as a notebook-style journal, separated by author Jason Reynolds (Stamped; Long Way Down) into three parts: "Breath One," "Breath Two" and "Breath Three." In the first breath, a Black first-person child narrator grapples with the protests he sees on the news about people who look like him fighting for "the freedom to breathe." With breath two, the child observes his family members in the living room while his father coughs incessantly in his bedroom. His father, despite the "rattling hack," reaches out to his son with optimism. In the third breath, the boy becomes overwhelmed with worry: "It feels like I'm the only person who can tell we're all suffocating." As the news makes him spiral, he sees "the beginning/ of a laugh" on his mother's face. Though the boy still wonders about the world, he is able to take a breath "in through the nose/ out through the mouth."

Griffin uses a childlike style to depict images such as neighborhoods on fire, a home swallowed by raging floods and figures in masks. The artist shows his creativity and range by also including abstract pages full of stark red and black paint and realistic figures like George Floyd or illustrations of hands. Reynolds's spare free verse appears as text printed out then taped down on top of the art. Together, the two creators channel the weight of uncertainty and chaos that Black people endure, as well as the hope they carry with them on a regular basis. --Kharissa Kenner, children's librarian, Bank Street School for Children

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