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# 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.
John Newbery Medal, 2026
"Watson has crafted an achingly beautiful novel that masterfully captures the realities of loss. A heartfelt portrait of the complexities of grief and the indomitable human spirit." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A phenomenal and realistic portrayal of a teenager experiencing the loss of a loved one for the first time. A must for all middle-grade collections." ―Booklist (starred review)
"A deeply affecting window into healing that skillfully manages to be both heartbreaking yet full of hope." ―Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"Brief yet poignant vignettes drive home the immediacy of grief as well as the importance of remaining attune to one's emotions in this tender and heartbreaking interpretation of loss." ―Publishers Weekly
"Watson doesn't hold back in depicting the wrenching heartache of a beloved life lost too soon, but she also brings her young readers to a powerful realization: that although loss is inevitable, we can all do our best to love as well and fiercely as we can, for as long as we can." ―BookPage
This information about All the Blues in the Sky was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her novel All the Blues in the Sky won the Newbery Medal, and Piecing Me Together received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Her books include the Ryan Hart series, Some Places More Than Others, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, cowritten with Ilyasah Shabazz, Watch Us Rise, cowritten with Ellen Hagan, and Love Is a Revolution, as well as acclaimed picture books: Summer Is Here, Maya's Song, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, written with Nikole Hannah-Jones, A Place Where Hurricanes Happen, and Harlem's Little Blackbird, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Renée splits her time between Portland, Oregon and New York City.
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