Monday, March 7, 2022

Teen Tuesday: Ain't Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds

Ain't Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds. Illustrated by Jason Griffin. 384p. Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/ Atheneum/ Simon & Schuster, January, 2022. 9781534439467. (Review of finished purchased copy.)

Happy Tuesday! Teen Tuesday features Ain't Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Jason Griffin. Mr. Reynolds is a fearless writer and poet, never afraid to get to the difficult spaces to speak truth. This hefty, visually stunning new work contains about ten sentences and over 300 pages of art inspired by those words that center around breathe. A young boy is quarantining with his family in an apartment where his mom has the news on 24/7 and it seems it's all bad news, especially for Black people. His little brother is glued to his video game and his father struggled to breathe in a bedroom.

Mr. Reynolds' text is typed on strips of paper, which are "taped" onto Moleskine notebook pages that are filled with Mr. Griffin's mixed media art. Both the art and the poetry are profound, not to be rushed through and something to revisit again and again.

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