Every Story Ever Told
by Ami Polonsky
Middle School    Little, Brown    256 pp.
10/24    9780316570978    $16.99
e-book ed.  9780316571005    $9.99

In this sequel to World Made of Glass (rev. 3/23), set a generation later, seventh grader Stevie (daughter of Iris Cohen, the first book’s protagonist) is attending her New Jersey town’s annual Kickoff to Summer celebration when a mass shooter goes on a killing spree. While Stevie escapes physically unscathed, she experiences the effects of trauma and guilt, playing a punishing “what-if” game with herself because she feels responsible for her mother’s plight. While waiting for her mom to emerge from a coma, she feels compelled to learn more about Iris’s life, a penance she thinks will make her a better daughter and absolve her guilt. In the process, she learns about the origins of her name and decides to start going by Stevie Jane, in honor of both her grandfather and her grandfather’s partner, and she makes a close connection with an elderly neighbor who survived Auschwitz. The narrative excels in portraying the physical experience of trauma and in forging connections to historical moments such as the Holocaust and the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This honest reckoning never sugarcoats reality, instead embracing the truth that “surviving is complicated” and that survivors emerge from their experiences forever changed. An author’s note expands on the idea of secondary trauma and recounts the author’s own close call with a mass shooting.

From the November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.