A Girl’s Journey Through Grief: Review of ALL THE BLUES IN THE SKY by Renée Watson

Renée Watson 

All the Blues in the Sky 

Bloomsbury Children’s Books / February 2025 / 182p / $17.99 

Reviewed by Molly McNamara Carter / April 2026

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“I didn’t know / best friends could die,” are the powerful opening words to Renée Watson’s 2026 Newbery Medal-winning middle-grade novel in verse, All the Blues in the Sky. From an emotional first-person perspective, Watson tells the story of a girl who has experienced an enormous loss in the death of her best friend, describing the grief that she experiences and her journey toward healing and acceptance. Watson’s compelling first-person approach to this novel in verse allows her to use short, almost snapshot-like scenes that put the reader directly into the mind and heart of the thirteen-year-old protagonist. As this is such an emotionally charged story, these choices make this sensitive topic approachable for a young audience.

The book opens with main character Sage’s devastating opening words as its own complete verse. The next verse immediately moves to Sage’s experience in her grief group. It isn’t until we progress further into the book through the use of first-person internal narrative that we learn the details of Sage’s best friend Angel’s death. At one point, Sage reflects on how life is full of problems that don’t have solutions and compares this to her situation with Angel. This internal narrative naturally unfolds for the reader the circumstances surrounding Angel’s death. She reflects:

I wish there were an actual answer given when I ask

why my best friend had to die.

Yes, she was hit by a car, but what I want to know

is why out of all the streets in Harlem,

 out of all the blocks to walk down and corners to cross

and red lights to run . . .

why did the car crash into her at the time it did?

 Later in the verse Sage concludes, “There are no answers to these questions.”

Watson continues to artfully weave backstory into the verses so the reader can piece together the details through conversations with friends, family, and her grief group, but mostly through Sage’s continued first-person internal narrative. We learn that one month prior to the opening pages of the book, Sage had requested that her best friend, Angel, join her on her birthday for a day of baking and fun followed by a sleepover. On her walk to Sage’s house, Angel is brutally hit by a car and killed.

There is no mystery as to why Sage feels responsible for her friend’s death but a natural uncovering of information as the story progresses. Angel had wanted to attend a different party the night of Sage’s birthday, but Sage had insisted, pulling the "birthday girl card" that Angel forgo the party with other friends and come to her house instead, therefore putting her in the exact spot at the exact time of the deadly accident.

Between the grief group Sage is required to attend, the young love interest she develops, and the other supportive people in her life, Sage slowly learns to heal from this tragedy. Sage’s relationship with Kofi, a boy she had met previously, becomes a safe place for her to process her feelings about her deceased friend. On her walk home after one of her grief sessions, Sage sees Kofi and joins him on a bench. Kofi’s easy manner helps her let her guard down. She considers how “[t]alking to Kofi about my best friend / is different from talking about her / with anyone else.” Kofi allows Sage to express herself, which she does after overcoming her fear that by doing so he would no longer have interest in her. Sage opens her heart to new friendships, validates her deceased friend’s love for her, and grows to the point that she can move on in her life. At one point Sage lashes out during her grief group, taking her hurt and anger out on them. Watson show us how Sage has grown when she returns and apologizes. She then reflects in a way that is in line with the first-person nature of the book, “I am letting some of the sadness go, and letting the kindness of others and forgiveness and laughter and first kisses in.”

Throughout the book, Watson artfully explores some stages of grief, including guilt, anger, and acceptance. Within her grief group, for instance, Sage’s anger is focused toward other participants, comparing their experiences with her own. She is most bothered that she didn’t get to say goodbye, like other members of the group did who had lost loved ones to long, drawn-out illnesses. At the end of the book, Sage finds out that her Aunt Ini, who has been like a grandmother to her, is dying from cancer. Sage realizes that regardless of the healing she has had thus far, death is, and will always be, a part of living.

Although All the Blues in the Sky is a story of grief and loss, it is also a story of hope. Sage learns that holding onto hope is what helps one continue to live, even when someone they love has died. Through Sage’s beloved Aunt Ini’s words, we are given one of the most powerful messages in the book. Aunt Ini shares with Sage her own journey through the grief of losing her sister, Sage’s grandmother. When Sage is experiencing grief powerful enough to tempt her to stay in bed, she reluctantly joins her Aunt Ini on a shopping trip. While browsing, Aunt Ini tells Sage how, even after forty years, she still misses her sister. “But isn’t that a beautiful thing?” Aunt Ini tells her. “To have experienced the kind of love that never truly leaves, that only grows and grows?” It is this message of hope instilled in Sage’s heart that helps her move forward to the devastating future of losing this beloved aunt, understanding that even after death, love will continue to grow. Later in the book, we see the growth Watson has created for her character again when in Sage’s internal narrative, she concludes, “Grief is not something you get over. / Every day it will show up. / Every day I will have to tend it.”

In the author’s note, we learn that Watson wrote this book in response to experiences she had living through the Covid-19 pandemic. She wanted to give voice to the feelings of loss and grief she experienced and the idea that trauma can layer on top of trauma. All the Blues in the Sky is the kind of story through which those who have experienced a loss will feel seen and understood. And for those readers fortunate enough not to have experienced loss in their young lives, the story offers a peek into the heart and mind of a young girl dealing with grief, perhaps helping them understand just a bit better the incomprehensible nature of that loss, and the hope that can still exist.

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Molly McNamara Carter is an MFA student at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University and the author of several books for young people, including Vroom, Zoom Any Room? which recently won the Ella’s Way Foundation award for books promoting kindness through children’s literature. Her newest novel, A Sea of Stars, a middle-grade historical fiction, will be published by Lawley Publishing in summer 2026.