Prepare yourself for something unlike anything: A smash-up of art and text for teens that viscerally captures what it is to be Black. In America. Right Now. Written by #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds.
Jason Reynolds and his best bud, Jason Griffin had a mind-meld. And they decided to tackle it, in one fell swoop. In about ten sentences, and 300 pages of art, this piece, this contemplation-manifesto-fierce-vulnerable-gorgeous-terrifying-WhatIsWrongWithHumans-hope-filled-hopeful-searing-Eye-Poppingly-Illustrated-tender-heartbreaking-how-The-HECK-did-They-Come-UP-with-This project about oxygen. And all of the symbolism attached to that word, especially NOW.
So, for anyone who didn’t really know what it means to not be able to breathe, REALLY breathe, for generations, now you know. And those who already do, you’ll be nodding yep yep, that is exactly how it is.
My Review
This is another book that totally blew my mind. The story is very simple, but even that is part of its power. The illustrations are so illuminating. I know the story is about oxygen, about breathing, about a flame catching, but that is also what reading this book feels like. It’s that perfect blend of a spark, oxygen, and fuel that creates a burst of flame.
I’ve had this book on my reading list since it came out. I noticed it recently on a Publisher’s Weekly list of best books of 2022, and decided it was time to just read it.
It’s the kind of book that you could read in an hour, less probably, but that you’ll want to take your time with instead. I found that as I read, I wanted to just sit with each illustration and let the words sink in.
I feel like I keep coming back to the fact that at its core, AIN’T BURNED UP THE BRIGHT is a simple story, yet it’s so much more. Maybe that’s what makes it so incredible.
Anyway, I highly recommend this book. I loved it, and I can’t think of anything else like it.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.
Representation The artwork shows a Black family. The story is from the perspective of a Black boy.
Profanity/Crude Language Content None.
Romance/Sexual Content None.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content References to news stories. The words stop short of specifically talking about police violence, but it’s clear that some of the news stories the narrator refers to are those stories. Some of the artwork shows fire.
Drug Content None.
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I’ve been thinking about doing another of these check-in posts for a while, but it’s been difficult to find the time to put one together. It seems like most of my blog time lately has really just been maintenance, which makes me feel super guilty. Ugh. I want to do more, but it’s hard to fit everything in right now. At any rate, it’s been a while, so let’s catch up a bit, shall we?
If we were having coffee…
I might actually be drinking herbal tea. Historically I haven’t been a huge tea drinker– maybe a cup now and then in the winter or when I’m feeling ill. Lately, though, drinking herbal tea has been part of a calming ritual for me. I am hooked on Teavana’s Mandarin Mimosa or Peach Tranquility. I’m drinking Mandarin Mimosa right now.
When I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed or I just need a few minutes to organize my thoughts, I make a cup of tea. Something about that simple act feels a bit like hitting a pause button. I get to do something for me, which every mom knows can be a challenge! So that’s been a huge help in terms of just creating some space in my head or in my day. Sometimes I’ll bring the tea in the car with me and drink it while I sit in the parking lot waiting for a curbside order.
If we were having coffee…
I’d ask you what you’ve been reading lately. For me, I feel like middle grade books have been saving my life. There’s something particularly poignant about books like GLITTER GETS EVERYWHERE and SIX FEET BELOW ZERO for me lately that feels like healing as I’m reading them. Books about wrestling with grief or about finding the humor in terrible situations. Those are really hitting hard for me right now, in a good way.
I’ve also been reading some hard books. I recently started reading THE MARROW THIEVES, which has been on my reading list awhile. I don’t know what I expected it to be about– I think I had mixed it up with another book maybe?? I was NOT prepared when I started reading it. The writing is amazing. I love the characters and the found family aspect. It’s just also really dark… like reminds me of THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy… that kind of dark– desperate and post-apocalyptic.
I’ve also been reading a couple of faith books. One is kind of a memoir (??) of sorts about a non-profit ministry that helps gang members in Los Angeles called TATTOOS ON THE HEART. It’s so, so good. I think I’ve spent a lot of time over the last several years seeing people who identify with my faith behaving in ways that are so the opposite of what I believe that I’ve felt really lost as a Christian. Reading about someone who is living faith in a way that makes me feel like YES, this is what I believe. Yes, this is a person from whom I feel like I can learn. That’s been incredibly healing for me. The author has two other books that are quickly leaping to the top of my reading list.
If we were having coffee…
We’d probably talk about health and family. The people you know who’ve been sick or have recovered. The ones who haven’t. We’ve lost neighbors. We’ve lost family. By now I feel like most families have been touched by Covid. We’re doing the best we can to find the balance between social distancing and still maintaining the relationships that are important. We’ve got family who respect, understand, and support us, and family who don’t.
My oldest decided to homeschool this year. My youngest will be at home, too. I keep hearing other parents talking about making those choices for their families and saying versions of “there are no good choices this year. We’re only able to make the best of the bad ones.” And I wholeheartedly agree.
I keep wondering if every year will be like this. No one can say. No one knows. I know I need to make decisions for THIS year, decisions that I can sleep with at night. But knowing what the next few years would look like seems like it would at least help a bit. At least we’d know if there’s a break in the clouds coming soon. For now, I have lots of questions, an not nearly enough answers.
I know that I’m exhausted, and I bet you are, too. No matter what you believe about Covid, the vaccine, masks, whatever, our lives have been altered, and it hasn’t been easy. And there’s no promise that it will suddenly become easy.
If we were having coffee…
I’d ask you if you think Covid will start to emerge in fiction. Like, I’m seeing it a little bit already– I have a couple books on my reading list that reference it in the backstory of the book. But like, will we start seeing more books where Covid is just a part of life? Are authors all holding their breaths, hoping that Covid is temporary, or clinging to writing present-day stories that don’t include Covid because then books still remain a safe escape from real life?
Will it be like cell phones, where eventually all contemporary stories include them? Where there’s like, a line in the fictional sand: stories set before 2020 have no Covid. Stories set after that include it and show social distancing and reflect what’s happening.
It’s weird, right? Even typing all that out, I feel like these are weird questions. Thinking about my own writing, I’m not even sure. How would Covid impact the story ideas I have? Right now I can’t imagine telling those stories in a Covid world.
If we were having coffee…
I’d want to end on a positive note. I’d want to talk about things I’m looking forward to. Okay, so this first one is kind of a cheat… but the final book in one of my FAVORITE series comes out in the US in October. The series is called The Storm Keeper’s Island (that link is to my review of the first book in the series) and the final book is called THE STORM KEEPER’S BATTLE. I have been looking forward to this book since I read the last page of the second book in the series, THE LOST TIDE WARRIORS.
Earlier this year I noticed THE STORM KEEPER’S BATTLE had already come out in the UK. Y’all, I don’t do a ton of preorders, and I had never ordered a UK release before at all. But. I absolutely ordered this one, and so I’ve technically already read it. I haven’t posted my review, and I will probably reread the book before I do. That’s how much I love the series. So. Yeah. I’m looking forward to seeing other bloggers talking about it, and maybe hopefully my bookish friends will read it and want to talk about it, too.
So that’s my update.
Thanks for sticking around or stopping by. Sorry I haven’t been as present lately with lists and recommendations and responding to comments the way that I want to. My littlest will start doing some preschool time with my mom a couple mornings per week soon, so I’m hoping that opens up a little more time for me to post and share and write more.
If we were having coffee, what would you want to tell me?
Leave me a comment with something you’d tell me if we were having coffee today. It can be related to the topics I’ve mentioned or something totally different.
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, QUIET has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.
My Review
I first read this book years ago, and I remember a lot of things suddenly making sense about myself and my daughter specifically. At the time I was a single mom with an elementary-aged daughter whose teacher was very much an extrovert. She seemed to prefer a collaborative learning environment in the classroom, which can be great. My daughter struggled with some of the methods her teacher used. I remember her teacher seeming frustrated or worried about it. I think she wanted my daughter to be able to engage more fully and was troubled that she didn’t seem to be getting her work done. My suspicion was that there was too much stimulation making it difficult for her to work. Reading QUIET helped me articulate that more effectively. I ended up giving a copy of the book to the teacher, who also loved it.
I started listening to the audiobook again this year because I’d been having trouble sleeping. I wanted something kind of low key to listen to– you know, no big dramatic climax or high stakes– so this seemed like a good fit.
It really struck me how much I had forgotten or how many things that didn’t apply to my life when I read the book before do apply now. I’m currently married and now have two children, sharing a communal-style home with my parents. And we are a house FULL of introverts! So it’s been really interesting thinking about some of the challenges and advantages common to introverted people in various stages of life and… in the midst of a pandemic.
Thinking about the pandemic also really changed what stood out to me in the book this time as I read/listened to it. Cain discusses research into how different animals with both introverted and extroverted members of their species handle risks. Different situations tend to give one group the advantage over the other in terms of survival, because their natural instincts either protect them or expose them to additional risks.
Introverts, Extroverts and Covid (Skip this section if it’s too political for you.)
Early on in the pandemic, I remember thinking that being introverted gave us an advantage because we weren’t ever really big go-out-and-do people. We do things. Sometimes? At our highest level of social activity, my husband and I had nearly weekly game nights with another couple. We rarely eat out at a restaurant– he has trouble hearing and I don’t speak very loudly. We like restaurant food, but takeout has long been our preferred approach.
So while we had to make sacrifices and change our behavior, the changes weren’t nearly as dramatic as for our extroverted friends who have huge house parties every few months and are super active in our local theater productions. I figured that as things began to normalize or restrictions began to loosen/Covid-19 case numbers began to drop, our extroverted friends would be more easily able to return to going out because that was a more comfortable, natural life pace for them. And I think that’s been true.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the chapters on how introverts and extroverts process risk. If I can oversimplify, introverts tend generally to be more risk-averse than extroverts. Sometimes extroverts head directly into risk when it would be better to retreat. Cain discussed some examples and studies on this. I’ve been thinking about that as I watch all these heated discussions about mask wearing and social distance guidelines. It’s not like all the extroverts I know are anti-mask and all the introverts are pro-mask. It’s definitely not that simple. But I guess it has helped me to think about the fact that sometimes there are motivations that I didn’t consider or understand behind people’s behaviors.
That doesn’t change what I think about masks… I’m still really pro-mask and think it falls within the values of loving others and being a responsible community member. But it helps to realize that it’s not that simple for a lot of people, and that there may be genetic or scientific reasons they are behaving the way they are.
Review Summary
I enjoyed reading this book again. It’s one of those books packed with so much information that I don’t know if I could absorb it all in one read. Even now I like the idea of revisiting certain chapters when I’m ready to look at more information.
There’s also a version of this book for younger readers called QUIET POWER. I don’t have it right now, but I really want to check it out. I’d like to post a review of that one as well. If you’ve read it already or have posted a review, please tell me about it in the comments or you can reach out to me on Twitter.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Representation Mostly discusses research and examples of famous introverts and extroverts. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are both mentioned. The depiction of Rosa Parks doesn’t line up with some of the descriptions from her autobiography. Cain also interviews a Chinese-American college student who’s an introvert in a program that overtly values extroverted behavior. He talks about how a summer in China was so different because some of the cultural values were more comfortable for him as an introvert and how validating that was for him.
Profanity/Crude Language Content None.
Romance/Sexual Content None.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content None.
Drug Content None.
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