Kitty was eleven when the bottom fell out of her world. Her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, despite never having been a smoker. Her mother didn’t respond to the treatment, and her cancer got worse. And then her mother died, and it was like the color drained from her world.
Color is big for Kitty. Her mother’s best friend Kate is an interior designer there in London, and she’s the one who first introduced Kitty to the Farrow & Ball paint palette. Ever since, Kitty has been obsessed with the paint colors, noting the shades of everything around her. She knows the names, the colors, and often the short blurb the company uses to describe the color. She hopes one day to create her own paint colors for them and create those names herself.
But for now, there are no colors. There is only sadness. Because grief, like glitter, gets everywhere, and there’s nothing you can do to clean it all up.
But the weeks go by. Kitty has to go back to school. Her older sister Imogen goes back to bring too cool to hang out with Kitty. Their father goes back to work. Her Gran, her mother’s mother, goes back to raising money to the hospice that helped Kitty’s mom. And their next-door neighbor just keeps on baking, because she’s won a spot on The Great British Bake-Off and needs to practice.
Then her father makes an announcement: they’re going to New York City for a few months, for a work project of his. Imogen is thrilled at the idea of going to New York, but Kitty refuses to go. She doesn’t want to leave her friends, she doesn’t want to leave her school, and she doesn’t want to leave home. But her Gran and Kate remind Kitty that her mother had visited New York City when she was younger and had loved it. She’d have wanted Kitty to go. So Kitty goes.
New York is filled with new experiences—seeing the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, eating a hot dog from a street vendor, going to a school with boys, and experiencing an American Thanksgiving. And while Kitty is still grieving, she does see that she can make new memories, meet new friends, and maybe even create her very first paint color.
Glitter Gets Everywhere is a lovely story of healing, of grieving, of coming together with those you care about, and of making new memories despite having lived through terrible pain. Yvette Clark’s debut middle grade novel is a warm and inviting invitation to this lovely family, and while their tragedy and loss is incredibly real, it’s balanced by the love of family and friends and the words of Kitty and Imogen’s mother in the letters she left for her daughters.
I loved Glitter Gets Everywhere. I thought Kitty’s obsession with the paint colors was charming, and her family and friends were adorable. As a big fan of The Great British Bake off, it made me so happy that it made its way into this story. And while not every tween has experienced the loss of a parent, I think most kids know some kind of loss in their lives, so they can still find some resonance with Kitty’s story. It’s charming, it’s uplifting, and it’s fun, and I think kids will like it too.
Egalleys for Glitter Gets Everywhere were provided by HarperCollins Children’s Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
