You Don’t Have to Be Everything

This is a review for a new book I received called published by Diana Whitney in exchange for this review.

This year Charlie and I will be studying Poetry in our Homeschool Language Arts Classes and even though You Don’t Have to Be Everything is for women/ girls I went through the book and found Poems Charlie could relate to that I can’t wait to share with Charlie.

There is Poets inside the book I want Charlie to research and see what other Poems they have written and for Charlie to not only read there poems but to describe them in his own words and to draw them in our Art Class.

Having Charlie readYou Don’t Have to Be Everything will help him come to understand women more and show Charlie they have the same problems boys/ men do.

My favorite section was Sadness and the poem Charlie and I liked the most was “What to Say to a Friend WHo Wants to Give Up written by JP Howard because one of Charlie’s best friends has tried to kill himself and this helped Charlie come to terms with how Bradley was feeling when he shot himself in the head. As well as how and why we should try and help him.

Poems to Turn to Again and Again – from Amanda Gorman, Sharon Olds, Kate Baer, and More
 
Created and compiled just for young women, You Don’t Have to Be Everything is filled with works by a wide range of poets who are honest, unafraid, and skilled at addressing the complex feelings of coming-of-age, from loneliness to joy, longing to solace, attitude to humor. These unintimidating poems offer girls a message of self-acceptance and strength, giving them permission to let go of shame and perfectionism.

The cast of 68 poets is extraordinary: Amanda Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate, who read at Joe Biden’s inauguration; bestselling authors like Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Acevedo, Sharon Olds, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Mary Oliver; Instagram-famous poets including Kate Baer, Melody Lee, and Andrea Gibson; poets who are LGBTQ, poets of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, poets who sing of human experience in ways that are free from conventional ideas of femininity.

Illustrated in full color with work by three diverse artists, this book is an inspired gift for daughters and granddaughters—and anyone on the path to becoming themselves.

No matter how old you are,
it helps to be young
when you’re coming to life,
to be unfinished, a mysterious statement,
a journey from star to star.
—Joy Ladin, excerpt from “Survival Guide”

About Diana Whitney

Diana Whitney writes across the genres in Vermont with a focus on feminism, motherhood, and sexuality. Her first book, WANTING IT, became an indie bestseller and won the Rubery Book Award in poetry.

She was the longtime Poetry critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she featured women and LGBTQ voices in her column. Her personal essays, op-eds, and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Glamour, and many more.

Diana holds a B.A. from Dartmouth, a M.A. from Oxford (where she was a Rhodes Scholar), and attended the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Her irreverent parenting column, Spilt Milk, was syndicated for years, ran as a public radio commentary series, and became a blog at The Huffington Post.

Diana also works as a feminist activist in her community and beyond. Her advocacy for survivors of Sexual violence has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others.

Thank you,

Glenda, Charlie and David Cates