Photo by Shawnte Sims

With the cheering of Newbery Medal committee members coming through the phone, author Renée Watson sat down at her home in New York City and looked at bookshelves displaying photographs of people she is grieving. Her mother. A close friend. Author, mentor, and “second mother” Nikki Giovanni. As she realized that All the Blues in the Sky, this book she wrote about grief, had just received the most prestigious award in children’s literature, Watson began to cry.

“It was just overwhelming,” said Watson, who won a Newbery Honor for Piecing Me Together in 2018. “This is my most vulnerable book. It’s the closest to things that I was dealing with. It just feels rewarding to get recognition for doing something that was a heartbook for me.”

The initial “seedlings” for this book were inspired after COVID school closures, as Watson watched children return to class without being given space for the kinds of conversations she felt they needed after such a traumatic time full of loss. Then her mother died and she was deep in her own grief, trying to process it and figure out how to cope.

With the writing of All the Blues in the Sky, she helped herself as she sought to help her readers.

“There’s a moment in the book where Sage learns that grief is like hunger and that she will always be grieving like there’s never going to be a day that we don’t need to eat,” Watson said. “I can have breakfast, and then by dinnertime, I need to eat again, and next week I’m going to need a meal, and three years from now, I’m going to be hungry. That was freeing for me as a person. It wasn’t just a plot point or something to just put in the book. It was really what I needed for myself to understand that I would always miss my mother, or that there will always be some issue that we’re fighting against and standing up for in this nation, and that that I can hold all of that. That’s normal and I’m okay.”

With that realization, Watson knew Sage wouldn’t be “healed” of her grief by the end of the book as the author originally intended. As she went on tour for All the Blues in the Sky, she met readers who wanted to share their grief but also support her in hers.

“I just wanted to be honest with young people,” she said. “I really tried to honor that they can handle it, because they are handling it right. They are actually grieving. A lot of our young people have lost grandparents or siblings or classmates, but also they’ve moved, or their parents are divorced, or they are afraid about what’s happening with immigration.

“There’s all kinds of loss that’s happening, and sometimes it’s hard and heavy. I just wanted to acknowledge that and give them the permission to feel all of it.”

[READ: ‘All the Blues in the Sky’ by Renée Watson Wins Newbery; ‘Fireworks’ Illustrated by Cátia Chien Earns Caldecott at 2026 Youth Media Awards]

Watson is particularly proud to have her first novel in verse get this kind of recognition, she said.

“I am a poet at heart, and I’ve always wanted to do a novel in verse,” said Watson, who added that she was trying to push herself as a writer. “I felt that this particular story— because grief is such a heavy emotion—I wanted the book to have space on the page where young people could pause, take a breath, and not be weighed down by so many words…. Poetry just felt like the right medium for a story about a grieving character.”

The choice of format resonated exactly as she had hoped.

The 2026 Newbery committee. Photo courtesy of Ramona Caponegro

“The novel in verse form and the accompanying white space on the pages made room for all the emotions that accompany loss, creating a close, vulnerable space for the main character Sage and the readers,” said Newbery committee chair Ramona Caponegro.

The book documents grief and its varied emotions, along with the sometimes difficult-to-understand truth that it can be felt at the same time as joy and celebration.

“Life is hard and amazing, so let’s talk about it,” said Watson.

[READ: SLJ Reviews the John Newbery Medalist ‘All the Blues in the Sky’ and Honor Books | ALA Youth Media Awards 2026]

On Monday afternoon, she fielded texts and calls from friends celebrating her Newbery recognition. She will wait for the New York City sidewalks and streets to be safer and cleared of the recent snowstorm, but she will not ignore the achievement.

“We’re going to toast and celebrate,” she said. “Because of how much grief I have had, it is very, very important to me to take the time to celebrate any small joys [and] any big joys. I am very intentional about that—relentless with making sure we pause to say this happened and we can’t just move past it. We will celebrate at some point this week when the snow melts away, and I get to hug them in real life.”