Book Review: How To Be Held by Maddie Godfrey

How to be held is an incredible book of poetry by the amazing Maddie Godfrey. It also includes my favourite one of all her poems; Labels are for Jars which is about not judging people and how we should never put labels on people like boy, girl or straight as you may not know how others identify and it’s really none of our business either. I absolutely loved reading How to be held as I adore how raw and open Maddie Godfrey’s poetry is.
 
I have been lucky enough to actually meet her and it was an incredible experience! She is an amazing, funny and honest person and I had a great time meeting her and getting to chat with her.
 
This book does have some very mature poetry in it but Maddie told me that if you’re not ready to read that you can still get book and ask an adult to just block out the poems with a more mature content. She has actually had some parents block out the poems that they felt their kids weren’t ready to read and they still were able to read most of the book and enjoy it.
 
Some of the poetry tackles really important issues such as abuse, discrimination, depression and much more, and the way she writes about these issues is very empowering as it is often hard for us to step up, take a stand and talk about abuse, discrimination, mental health and all of these urgent challenges. This is another reason why to me, she is such an inspiration, because of how she tackles this mature content.
 
If you love reading the works of Maya Angelou or Jesse Oliver and feel inspired by them, I’m sure you will love and feel inspired by this book!

Click the link below to watch the interview I did with Maddie for Booktoberfest 2019.

Click here for the interview