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

The illustrations in this poetry anthology are so gorgeous, you’ll want to paper your rooms with them. Though the title implies the book is for girls, I’ll bet anything boys will claim this book too. Editor Diana Whitney—who is also a yoga teacher in Vermont—snags readers with her stunningly honest introduction; she confesses her own hardest, growing-up secret in the second paragraph. As a queer mother of two teenage daughters, Whitney invites vulnerability and mutual care in every word she writes. Sections such as “Attitude” and “Belonging” and “Rage” will appeal to all the girls we are or remember being. The delicious poems range from Margaret Atwood to Sahar Romani, Sarah Kay to Natalie Diaz. They’re the positively contagious sorts of poems that will encourage writing in others, giving confidence along the way. And the book’s history is already delicious: it was a #1 bestseller on Amazon in the Teen/YA poetry category, and it made the Indie Bestseller list in the YA category too. Keep giving books as gifts, everybody! In one breathtaking poem, Bianca Stone describes, after much trauma and difficulty, being “prepared to do something drastic / like live and live and live.” This book helps readers want to do that even better.