Book of the Week #29 - For Every One by Jason Reynolds

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.
 
So here we are at the tail end of this year, and my final book recommendation for 2020. It feels like a cliché now to reference just how turbulent this year has been globally, but what it has emphasised to me, as much as anything, is that you can never predict what is around the corner. However, much more significantly, it’s shown the importance of holding tight to the very concept of possibility. With that in mind, my last Book of the Week selection this year is one dedicated to that concept: For Every One by Jason Reynolds.
 
Reynolds is a prolific and multi-award-winning poet and author, primarily for young readers. However, For Every One is just that—a book for everybody. It’s a short, poetic piece written in the form of a letter, but it’s truly an amorphous meditation on motivation; a mantra that could be repeated—and read—again and again.
 
Written in bursts that are beautifully laid out on the page, the book describes both Reynolds own ambitions and the difficulties he faces in aiming to attain them—but it also reaches out with its words to us as readers, willing us on, supporting our struggles, and emphasising the importance of relishing in the act of striving. It is a piece of writing that is not necessarily about the destination of a dream, but the journey to it. For Every One is a book that’s sure to motivate any and all of us who have endured the tumbles and bumps of this unprecedented year, and I’d say it would make a wonderful gift. All we have to remember is that this has just been one stop along the way. As Reynolds writes: Dreams don’t have timelines, deadlines, and aren’t always in straight lines.
 
So, here’s to our dreams for the journey to come, and that’s why For Every One by Jason Reynolds is my Book of the Week this week.