Impressive collection. Voices that need to be heard. The sections titles were fitting. Great read. Love the different poets.

* I received an advanced copy of this book for free from Workman Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review *

Diana Whitney compiled the poems in You Don't Have To Be Everything hoping to collect the voices she wished she'd heard as a teen, voices that presented all the different sides of womanhood and girlhood: anger, fear, joy, curiosity, bravery, growth, and love. This anthology collects over 50 poems from diverse femme-identifying voices split between eight categories: Seeking, Loneliness, Attitude, Rage, Longing, Shame, Sadness, and Belonging. The poems cover topics ranging from eating disorders, sexual violence, trans identity, queer and straight love, and growing up. As an avid reader of poetry, I was excited to see that this anthology has poems by big poetry names like Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver, as well as less well known poets and spoken word artists, and I was happy to read a whole bunch of poems new to me, as well as a few poems I was previously familiar with! As someone raised within the societal pressures of girlhood, I read these poems and wishes I could give these words back to my younger self. You Don't Have to Be Everything is a diverse anthology, with poetry that works to shed light on all the dark and scary parts of womanhood while also honoring all the badass, brave, and beautiful parts of being socialized as a woman. This collection is not to be missed!

im new to the poetry genre but i really enjoyed this one! it was interesting to read and made me discover new authors.

This book it's a beautiful compilation of poems by a very wide range of authors. It wonder around different themes that are core to the teenage experience. It's easy to read and, while some poems really hit me and others leave me a little bit more indifferent (which is crompehensible), what has delighted me the most about this read it's that despite of it's diversity, it's possible to find some strong insights and feelings that every young girl have in common with each other. Usually when you are a teenager you feel quite lonely, misunderstood and unable to express your feelings, but thanks to poem books like this I'm sure that many girls (or boys, or non-binary teenagers) will realize that they are not alone. I wish I had found a book like this when I was at that stage of my life and I would recommend it to everyone that age.

Disclaimer: english it's not my first language, sorry for any grammar or spelling mistake I might have made in this review.

I really loved this book. The colours and drawings were absolutely beautiful even just on my tablet. I would love to see what this looks like in hardcover. I would've loved to have this book out when I was younger. I think it would've been great to flip through whenever. I also plan to buy this for young girls in my life when they get older, aka go through their teenage years! Hopefully this book will be as helpful to them.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of You Don't Have to be Everything in exchange for an honest review.

I love poetry collections with my whole heart, but oh my goodness are they difficult to rate and review. Especially when like You Don't Have to Be Everything, they draw from several different writers talking about several different topics in several different styles.

I'm not going to lie, I definitely didn't fully understand every poem in here, but not every poem is written for every person. I did love a lot of them and Whitney's grouped the poems around emotions and provides a brief description before each new emotional section that allows you to understand at least some part of all the poems even if they don't fully resonate with you personally.

Drawing from so many different voices also allowed for a stunning amount of intersectionality here. The poems are all so diverse in subject matter, writer, and speaker that there's almost certainly something here for any and every kind of girl.

There is a lot to love in this book: carefully curated poetry, beautiful art, topics that will solidly resonate. My one qualm is the explanations at the beginning of the different subsections as they talk down to the reader by giving didact, interpretative overviews of the poems. These sections take away from the beauty and openness of the medium. Besides that, this book can be a great addition to poetry collections.

This is a collection of empowering, affirming, caring poems. It brings together works from modern poets that speak to teen girls of today. I appreciate the way Whitney divides the poems into moods to help the reader find just the right salve for their emotional state.
I am looking forward to getting this for our high school library and sharing many of the poems during our April poetry month, when we do 'poem in my pocket' canvassing at our school.

I really liked this collection!

I don't normally like poetry, but when I saw this title to request I did it right away-- female and queer authors, full of empowerment, for young women? Count me in!

I loved a lot of poems but also didn't like a whole other lot. I think a lot of them were rooted in its authors and therefore extremely personal, so I couldn't fully comprehend them. I would read and understand, but didn't connect at all.

It also has a lot formats on poetry, from typical, structured poetry to Instagram, prose-alike, punctuation mark-less poetry. I bet any reader would love many of these poems and their structure and rhythm.

I am not fan of poems, but if you are you will like it a lot. You do not have to be everything. You are perfect the way you are. love everything about yourself.

This is an excellent collection of empowering poems for women to read as they are growing up and going through life's challenges. I wish that I had a book like this when I was younger, especially as a teenager, to remind me that it's okay to be unique and that sadness I feel will not last forever.

The poems are split into different categories for different moods. I truly felt moved and effected by a handful of these, and re-read those over and over to fully understand the impact that it was having on me as I read it. The illustrations that go along with these poems were an added bonus. They were bright and colorful, reminding you that life can be both those things.

There are such great female authors who contributed to this anthology, and I loved that. It was empowering to me, plus it was women writing about these experiences, who understand what these experiences are like for us.

I feel like this is a book that should be required reading for females in high school.