Book Review: For Everyone

For Everyone by Jason Reynolds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My friend, Cait, handed this book to me and said, do you have five minutes? It took a few more minutes, sitting in a waiting room for a consultation on a possible heart condition- a heart attack at 39 with zero risk factors. An event that left me wondering if the time for my dreams had ended or just begun or transformed in some way.

She didn't tell me this book would speak to me. She didn't warn me I might not want to read it in public because the beauty of it might make me cry no matter how quickly I might be able to read it. Or that I would want to read it again and share it with specific people and with every student passing by to encourage them in their dreams, in their goals, in their lives.

It makes me think of Mrs. Beale, my acting teacher, colleague, friend. She read us "The Places You'll Go" our senior year with a hint of a tear in her eye. A little choked up at her hopes for our futures. It reminds me of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" in some sense, but completely different and new in another. I can see connecting these texts in the classroom and engaging students by inspiring them all while preparing them with a toolbox of practicalities with which to build up their dreams and toss the practicalities aside.

Jason Reynolds writes of creating and alludes to himself as well as anyone writing "...maybe even letters to people / you don't know but / do know you love." This is how I feel about all of my students past, present, and future. How I feel about all of the students who walk through our library stopping to get a book or to talk or maybe not even stopping at all. It is how I feel about all of the students in the halls of our Florida high school, in the halls of schools everywhere. This is the beauty that will bring a tear to your eyes, I hope. This is the beauty of embracing and chasing your dreams and spreading that passion to others to do the same because your heart holds nothing but love for them.

So, Dear Jason, I don't know much more than that either, but I am writing back never-the-less because I, too, am a Dreamer who needed some "firelight for this long and often dark road." Don't worry. I plan to share it.
Thank you.

Love,
A Dreamer

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