Review Detail

This Is Not A Small Voice: Poems by Black Poets

Middle Grade Non-Fiction 296

Keepsake Quality Book of Black Poetry

December 03, 2025 (Updated: June 06, 2026)

Overall rating

4.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

4.0

Learning Value

4.0

Starting with a note discussing her deep relationship to Black poetry, Todd explains how poems can help people cope with life and understand it better. She also explains that the poems she has collected were written over a large period of history, and that terminology has changed. I love that some of the poems in the book were written especially for it by current writers like Derrick Barnes and Nikki Grimes.

While there are no set chapters devoted to particular themes, the poems are arranged so that they relate to each other nicely; there might be several poems about food clustered together, or poems about water. There's a wide variety of topics. In the afterword, there are explanations of some of the historical events depicted in certain verse, which is a nice touch. There is a similar treatment of poems of "Power and Protest", which is also helpful. The collection is a good mix of poems about ordinary life and these larger, more significant occurrences.

Good Points

It's helpful that there is not only an index of poets, since some have several works included, but also an index of poems by title and by first line. This is a fairly long collection (120 pages), and it can be hard to find particular poems one wishes to read again.

It would have been nice to include short biographies of the poets, although there are quite a number of them. Lacking that, putting the years of publication with the poems would have provided some context.

Orlando's illustrations frame the poems very nicely, and are colorful and distinctive. The artwork was clearly closely tailored to the content, which I always enjoy.

It's hard to comment on individual poems, when there are so many. Todd mentions an anthology of poems that she read as a child, and I think she did a good job of creating a similar book for the new Millennium. There's a space for the owner's name at the beginning of the book, and I can see this becoming a much loved favorite. Other collections of poems centered on the Black experience include Alexander's Out of Wonder, Giovanni's Hip Hop Speaks to Children: 50 Inspiring Poems with a Beat , Gorman and Long's Change Sings: A Children's Anthem, and Reynold's Ain't Burned All the Bright.