cover image You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves

You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves

Edited by Diana Whitney, illus. by Cristina González et al. Workman, $14.95 paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-5235-1099-3

Organized in sections named after emotions that a maturing young woman might feel (longing, loneliness, rage), this empowering assemblage of poems by an inclusive group of women writers offers insight and community to readers navigating adolescence. In poems that promote authenticity and staying true to oneself, poets including Elizabeth Acevedo, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, and Brenda Shaughnessy report on experiences of love, physicality, sexuality, and trauma, among others. Whitney’s introduction offers a message that permeates the volume’s entirety: “We are already enough.” Full-color illustrations by a cohort of artists feature variously shaped women of myriad skin tones. Ages 12–up. (Mar.)