Ain’t Burned All The Bright - Krishna Jaswal

 Ain’t Burned All The Bright

Sneak Peek and Review By Krishna Jaswal 

One Monday morning, after putting all my folders and notebooks away in my locker, I realized I did not have a book to read during Language and Literature class. So, I decided to head to the library in hopes of finding something that might interest me. I was walking and ended up in the back room of the library looking at random books, until one caught my eye. Ain’t Burned All The Bright is a young-adult poem picture book written by Jason Reynolds and artwork by Jason Griffin published in 2022. To break it down, each page has no more than twenty words on it with unique artwork going with it and all the pages join together to form a beautiful, breath-sucking story. The book is split into three parts: Breath One, Breath Two, and Breath Three. I think what originally caught my eye was the fact that the spine of the book looked like someone had glued the words of the title onto it. 

To put it simply Ain’t Burned All the Bright is a poetic picture book narrated by an African American teen who is coping with his family through the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United States. Not only that, his father has COVID-19 and has to isolate himself from their family. The narrator describes his mother who wouldn’t change the news channel, his brother who wouldn’t move from in front of his video games, his sister who gossips with her friends over the phone about this and that, and his father who despite what he's going through keeps a smile on his face. Despite the chapters being titled Breath One, Breath Two, and Breath Three, the overarching theme of the book is about how it feels like he is suffocating inside of his own home but doesn’t realize the oxygen he needs is right in front of him. And what it means to not be able to breathe and how sometimes the oxygen you need is within the people and things around you. 

To put it honestly, being stuck in your house and not being able to leave during the early stages of the pandemic really sucked and this book captures that feeling so effortlessly. It did take me a few days to read the whole book but I think it was because of the fact that I had to appreciate the magnificent artwork on each page that accompanied the words like puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. I genuinely can't get over the amazing artwork in the book; I’m honestly considering buying a copy of the book to have it in my room available for me to read. Ain’t Burned All The Bright is an outstanding book that captures the feelings of a young boy who just feels like he can’t breathe but finds the oxygen he needs in his home. Ain’t Burned All the Bright deserves a solid 10/10 and I highly recommend you check it out!