Antonia Adams, a former kindergarten teacher in the Houston Independent School District, the district George Floyd attended, uses this bilingual book with her class when they begin talking about their identities and what they love about themselves. “They are among our youngest learners, so the focus is on the first of the anti-bias and anti-racist goals,” she told me, referring to the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s anti-bias education. The curriculum includes four main goals; the first, Identity, advises, “Children will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.” Providing young children with the proper language for discussing differences has had a huge impact on her students and their language development, Adams says. “We use this book at the beginning of the year when we open our writer’s workshop because the first book they ‘publish’ is a personal narrative, and I want them to try their best to offer accurate images of the people in their lives,” she told me. The book teaches children why people have different skin tones, and the role that people’s location and their ancestors’ location play in that. “It’s a beautiful book that results in young children using the word ‘melanin’ properly and also helps them think about it in a scientifically accurate and child-friendly manner,” Adams says. “It’s one I highly recommend to those interacting with young children.” (Two more books that focus on skin color and self-love are Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o and Different Differenter by Jyoti Gupta, which we recommend in our gift guides for 5- and 8-year-olds, respectively.)
