No Voice Too Small
Lindsay H. Metcalf, editor
Lindsay H. Metcalf is the author of Farmers Unite! Planting a Protest for Fair Prices. She has also been a reporter, editor, and columnist for the Kansas City Star and other news outlets.
Read more about Lindsay.
Keila V. Dawson, editor
Keila V. Dawson has been a community organizer and an early childhood special education teacher. She is the author of The King Cake Baby.
Read more about Keila.
Jeanette Bradley, editor and illustrator
Jeanette Bradley has been an urban planner, an apprentice pastry chef, and the artist-in-residence for a traveling art museum on a train. She is the author and illustrator of Love, Mama.
Read more about Jeanette.
- Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books of 2020
Kirkus Reviews
Tributes in prose and poetry to children and teens of today who have spoken out to support a cause or protest injustice. Budding activists in search of child role models beyond the high-profile likes of Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg may well draw inspiration from this less-intimidating—but no less brave and worthy—lineup. For each, a poem by one of 14 poets and a laudatory paragraph flank an engaging, soft-focus portrait by Bradley that digitally emulates chalk and pastels on a textured brown background. “Each activist,” write the editors, “inspired a poet who relates to an aspect of the activist’s identity.” New Yorker Charles Waters, for instance, gives a shoutout to 6-year-old Samirah “DJ Annie Red” Horton, “proudly / representing the People’s Republic of Brooklyn” with her anti-bullying rap; Zach Wahls, founder of Scouts for Equality, poses with his two moms next to a triolet from Lesléa Newman. Other contributors, including Carole Boston Weatherford, Janet Wong, and Joseph Bruchac, honor young people making good trouble in areas of contention as varied as climate change, gender identity, immigration law, safe drinking water, and gun violence. The contributors are as diverse of identity as their young subjects, and as a sidelight the poems are cast in a variety of identified forms from free verse to reverso, cinquain, and tanka. Never too soon to start stirring things up: “We may be small / but / we / can / ROAR!”
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-62354-131-6
E-book
ISBN: 978-1-63289-899-9 EPUB
Ages: 5-9
Page count: 40
10 x 10