At the bot­tom of the ded­i­ca­tion page of Every Sto­ry Ever Told sits a trig­ger warn­ing. It states that the sec­ond chap­ter depicts a mass shoot­ing and that lat­er chap­ters include scenes of vio­lence. Despite its omi­nous begin­ning, this mid­dle-grade nov­el ele­gant­ly weaves the trau­ma of a mass shoot­ing with sto­ries of friends and loved ones who have over­come adver­si­ty. Thir­teen-year-old Ste­vie Jane can’t wait to get to her town’s ​“Kick­off to Sum­mer” cel­e­bra­tion. She wants to hang out with her friends and get away from her par­ents, espe­cial­ly her annoy­ing moth­er. But a shoot­ing at the cel­e­bra­tion changes every­thing. Ste­vie Jane isn’t struck by the bul­lets, but her moth­er is seri­ous­ly injured. Ste­vie Jane then heads to New York City to stay with her grand­par­ents while her moth­er receives care in the hos­pi­tal. Ste­vie Jane is joined by her life­long friend, Avi, who brings her a ther­a­py dog, Raisin. With Avi and Raisin’s help, Ste­vie Jane aims to make amends to her mother. 

While it is deeply trou­bling that this sto­ry has to exist — that today’s young peo­ple need a nov­el to grap­ple with the fact of mass shoot­ings — Ami Polon­s­ki, a mid­dle school teacher who expe­ri­enced the 2023 shoot­ing in High­land Park, Illi­nois, is the right per­son to write it. She under­stands both ado­les­cents and the trau­ma of a mass shoot­ing. She has stitched togeth­er the things that might occu­py a Jew­ish girl’s mind: friends, romance, social media, sex­u­al­i­ty, fam­i­ly his­to­ry, the Holo­caust, men­tal health, and survivor’s guilt. Polon­s­ki notably leaves out any details about the shoot­er, leav­ing the focus on the expe­ri­ence of the victims.

This impor­tant book should be read with a trust­ed adult.