Brimming over with esteem for girls and their potential, Amanda Gorman's new children's book affirms that "the world must hear us roar." The internationally acclaimed author of Call Us What We Carry, Change Sings, and more is a wordsmith and change-maker around issues of feminism, race, and marginalization. She is the youngest presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history and was appointed the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate.
In this book Gorman celebrates differences:
"Each of us a different shape and size,
A different wonder and a different wise."
Yet she speaks of these unique individuals "standing together in the fight." Illustrator Loveis Wise gives us a girl in hijab with a megaphone, a girl in a wheelchair holding a protest poster, a girl shoulder-to-shoulder with her sisters with a fist in the air as a bird soars free. In both poetry and bold, flowing pictures, we feel exuberant hope.
Yet Gorman knows the importance of facing fiercely into danger as well:
"We are beautiful,
Not because of how we may appear,
But how we look
Straight into the face of fear."
A gorgeous oval collage near the end shows women and girls going about their daily life-giving activities — planting, harvesting, meditating, cooling off with a swim together — while Gorman's poetry reminds us:
"We all win when one girl tries,
When she defies
With her rallying cries,
Tried and true."
This kind of defiance is a soul rallying cry toward what we know to be true and meaningful. Readers ages four to eight, for whom the book is designed, will not be the only ones who benefit from remembering "our spunk and spirit."
