Glitter Gets Everywhere is a thought-provoking look at grief through the eyes of Kitty over the course of a couple of years in her life.

The book explores her relationships with family and friends, and how her mother’s death and her grief play into her reactions and responses with them. It is an excellent introduction for young readers into death and grief, acknowledging that everyone experiences grief in their own ways and that it is not always a linear process, it can be messy and complicated – which is normal and ok.

The family move from London to New York for a few months which Kitty thinks is a terrible idea, and initially she does not want to admit to her new friends that her mum has died. This hit home for me, whilst I am lucky in that I have not lost a parent, my parents divorced when I was in my teens. I never told any of my friends that this happened, I pretended that my dad was still living at home with me and my mum. However, Kitty becomes friends with a boy at school in New York called Henry and as their friendship develops, she can open up to him in a way she hasn’t with anyone else.

The story shows that whilst grief does not have a specific end point, and isn’t something that ever really goes away, it is something that can be lived with (the moments of glitter grief) and that there can still be positives in life going forward. It brings hope in a heart-breaking time in Kitty’s life.
This book will make a brilliant addition to a library’s empathy collection.

Thank you to Edelweiss+ and the publisher for an eARC of this book.