Book Review: All the Blues in the Sky
Feb. 17th, 2026 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI was cautiously optimistic about this year’s Newbery winner, Renée Watson’s All the Blues in the Sky, because I liked Watson’s earlier book Piecing Me Together. However, these hopes collapsed when I realized that this is yet another example of my least favorite Newbery genre: Books in Verse About Death.
There is probably someone, someone, who could make me enjoy a Book in Verse about Death, but unfortunate Watson is not that person, or at least this book is not that book.
Our heroine is Sage, who recently lost her best friend when she was hit by a drunk driver while walking to Sage’s house for Sage’s birthday. Sage is now part of the grief group at school, where she sits inwardly sneering at the two members who lost people after a long illness (a grandmother to dementia, and a twin sister to leukemia), because THEY don’t know what it’s like to lose someone unexpectedly.
And, you know, technically this is true. But one feels that at some point someone should point out to Sage that she doesn’t know what it’s like to live in the Valley of the Shadow of Death for years, watching a loved one slowly wither away.
And okay fine, Sage’s Aunt Ini does eventually point out that everyone grieves differently and you can’t directly compare grief etc etc. However, there’s a scene where Sage screams at these girls that they don’t understand anything, and I really, really wanted one of them to scream back that they might not understand her grief but at least they’re TRYING, unlike Sage who very obviously doesn’t give a damn about them. Like, her disdain is so obvious that the other members of Grief Group (the ones who also lost people unexpectedly and are therefore acceptable to Sage) comment that Sage doesn’t like the girls whose relatives died long, slow, agonizing deaths, and Sage responds that it’s because they “don’t know how good they had it.”
But of course no one screams back at Sage. Of course when Sage apologizes, everyone accepts it, instead of telling her to stuff her apology where the sun don’t shine, or at least pointing out the fact that she blew up about how the others don’t understand her pain when she hasn’t been trying even slightly to understand theirs.
And then! And then! AND THEN IT TURNS OUT AUNT INI IS DYING. Yes. At the end of the book, Aunt Ini explains that she has a fatal illness.
This does not of course push Sage to reflect that this is actually not better than sudden death, but simply a different kind of hell, and maybe she’s been really unfair to those poor girls in Grief Group. (To be fair, no one would think about that in the immediate aftermath of learning their beloved relative is dying. Nonetheless, I think we could have had another poem to reflect upon this fact, once Sage has had some time to absorb the initial shock.)
But still. MORE DEATH. EXTRA BONUS DEATH AT THE END OF THE VERSE NOVEL ABOUT DEATH, WHICH ALREADY FEATURES THE MAIN CHARACTER’S BEST FRIEND DYING PLUS AN ENTIRE GRIEF GROUP WORTH OF DEATH.
There is probably someone, someone, who could make me enjoy a Book in Verse about Death, but unfortunate Watson is not that person, or at least this book is not that book.
Our heroine is Sage, who recently lost her best friend when she was hit by a drunk driver while walking to Sage’s house for Sage’s birthday. Sage is now part of the grief group at school, where she sits inwardly sneering at the two members who lost people after a long illness (a grandmother to dementia, and a twin sister to leukemia), because THEY don’t know what it’s like to lose someone unexpectedly.
And, you know, technically this is true. But one feels that at some point someone should point out to Sage that she doesn’t know what it’s like to live in the Valley of the Shadow of Death for years, watching a loved one slowly wither away.
And okay fine, Sage’s Aunt Ini does eventually point out that everyone grieves differently and you can’t directly compare grief etc etc. However, there’s a scene where Sage screams at these girls that they don’t understand anything, and I really, really wanted one of them to scream back that they might not understand her grief but at least they’re TRYING, unlike Sage who very obviously doesn’t give a damn about them. Like, her disdain is so obvious that the other members of Grief Group (the ones who also lost people unexpectedly and are therefore acceptable to Sage) comment that Sage doesn’t like the girls whose relatives died long, slow, agonizing deaths, and Sage responds that it’s because they “don’t know how good they had it.”
But of course no one screams back at Sage. Of course when Sage apologizes, everyone accepts it, instead of telling her to stuff her apology where the sun don’t shine, or at least pointing out the fact that she blew up about how the others don’t understand her pain when she hasn’t been trying even slightly to understand theirs.
And then! And then! AND THEN IT TURNS OUT AUNT INI IS DYING. Yes. At the end of the book, Aunt Ini explains that she has a fatal illness.
This does not of course push Sage to reflect that this is actually not better than sudden death, but simply a different kind of hell, and maybe she’s been really unfair to those poor girls in Grief Group. (To be fair, no one would think about that in the immediate aftermath of learning their beloved relative is dying. Nonetheless, I think we could have had another poem to reflect upon this fact, once Sage has had some time to absorb the initial shock.)
But still. MORE DEATH. EXTRA BONUS DEATH AT THE END OF THE VERSE NOVEL ABOUT DEATH, WHICH ALREADY FEATURES THE MAIN CHARACTER’S BEST FRIEND DYING PLUS AN ENTIRE GRIEF GROUP WORTH OF DEATH.
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Date: 2026-02-17 01:50 pm (UTC)I think her name doesn't help things, given your own Sage story.
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Date: 2026-02-17 02:57 pm (UTC)And yes, I'm sure part of it was just that my inner two-year-old felt that Watson had POACHED my heroine's NAME. Which obviously is ridiculous and yet!
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Date: 2026-02-17 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-17 06:05 pm (UTC)