When Renée Watson arrived home to New York City this past weekend, she had plenty of things on her mind—and hearing from the Newbery Committee wasn’t one of them. “I had just gotten back from London,” Watson told PW. “I was jet-lagged and unpacking, trying to get settled in, and the snowstorm had come to New York, so I was like, ‘let me get some groceries.’ I was so distracted, with just, you know, life.” Then, on Sunday evening, her phone rang. “It was the committee,” she said. “They were cheering, and they gave me the great news, and I was completely taken aback.”
The committee’s great news, of course, was that Watson had won the Newbery Medal for her middle grade novel All the Blues in the Sky (Bloomsbury), which follows 13-year-old Sage as she tries to navigate the complex and unpredictable feelings that come with grieving the sudden death of her best friend.
In the initial surprise of the call, “My first reaction was to say thank you,” Watson recalled. And then a new wave of emotion rolled in. As committee chair Ramona Caponegro was explaining the logistics of next steps, “I looked over at a bookshelf that I have in my living room that has framed photos of beloved people—my mother, Nikki Giovanni, a dear friend named DéLana who recently passed away,” Watson said. “And then it hit me. I wrote this book because I had so much of my own grief, and looking at those photos, it got me so emotional. We were all crying—I was crying, the committee was crying, all of us saying that we can’t wait to be in person in June [at ALA Annual] to celebrate together.”
But in the meantime, Watson plans to have a celebration closer to home, as soon as weather conditions allow. “I’m going to have to figure that out,” she said with a laugh. “We’re snowed in here in New York, so I can’t do anything tonight. But this week, at some point, I will gather with my people, and we will toast and hug each other and laugh and just take in the moment.” It’s a moment of levity that Watson is especially looking forward to. “I’ve had deep losses, and I’ve had folks with me who have mourned alongside me and really been here for those moments. And I think it’s just as important to have the tears of joy and have those same people with me to celebrate and be happy about something.”
The Newbery recognition represents other full-circle feelings for Watson, too. “This was my first time writing a novel in verse,” she said. “Poetry was my first love; I still write it personally in my journal.” With All the Blues in the Sky, she felt the time was right to embrace poetry in a new way. “Telling a full narrative through the vehicle of verse was a lovely challenge,” she said. “It felt appropriate for a story that was heavy because I wanted space to be on the page where kids could just pause and breathe and take in everything that was happening.”
She recalled her earliest impressions of the award and the significance of becoming part of its legacy. “I was the little girl in the library searching for the sticker books and rubbing my fingers around that circle sticker, understanding that it was something special,” she said. “To now be an author who has those stickers on my books means a lot to me, and for this particular story to be acknowledged in this way, it’s validating. I was pushing myself to do something new and different, and it feels very rewarding to be honored for taking that kind of artistic risk.”
Watson finds comfort in the fact that her book is going to exist for young readers everywhere who will one day have to process grieving something or someone. “Instead of trying to get over the sadness or deny it, I wanted young people to know it’s OK to be sad and to be happy and you can do both things at the same time. I take it very seriously that I’m trusted to tell stories to young people and spend time with them in that way. So it’s an incredible honor that my words are going to be resonating with young people for years to come.”
