The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Reynolds, Jason, and Griffin, Jason. Ain’t Burned All The Bright. Atheneum Books, 2022.

A young Black boy lives with his family at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the summer of 2020. While the George Floyd protests also rage, the boy is trapped in the house with his family while his father is sick. On a single day, he wonders why the news focuses so heavily on crime and violence while also trying to find a way to connect with his siblings and mother as they navigate.

The narrative is a mix of poetry and illustration broken into three sections, denoted as "breaths", and seemingly spanning the course of a single day. Each section includes a single sentence that ends before the repeating imagery of a boy breathing in a yellow flower and blowing out a birthday candle accompanied by the text "in through the nose out through the mouth". The text is not distributed uniformly across the pages, appearing in different positions and containing blank pages as well. Illustrations often also span both pages and must be examined as a work of art together rather than two separate images.

The illustrations are serious in tone and follow a darker theme as the novel deals with the pandemic and the protests following George Floyd's death. Awash in deep blues, black, and red, the narrative conveys a sense of panic, confusion, and fear as the boy tries to find a way to manage his confusing and overwhelming emotions. Further, as the novel is printed on a thicker form of paper and the illustration techniques are intended to evoke layering and texturized art forms, the physical book provides a depth of emotion through this mimicry of texture that enhances the sensory experience of reading.