A positive and affirming look at skin color, from an artist's perspective.
Seven-year-old Lena is going to paint a picture of herself. She wants to use brown paint for her skin. But when she and her mother take a walk through the neighborhood, Lena learns that brown comes in many different shades.
Through the eyes of a little girl who begins to see her familiar world in a new way, this book celebrates the differences and similarities that connect all people.
Karen Katz created The Colors of Us for her daughter, Lena, whom she and her husband adopted from Guatemala six years ago.
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 6, 2020 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781250811158
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- ATOS Level: 2.5
- Lexile® Measure: 570
- Interest Level: K-3(LG)
- Text Difficulty: 0-2
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Reviews
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September 1, 1999
PreS-Gr 2 -Lena's mother is an artist, so she knows whereof she speaks when she insists that there are many different shades of brown. The two take a walk through their neighborhood by way of illustration, and the friends and relatives they meet along the way aptly reinforce Mom's contention. Their skin colors are compared to honey, peanut butter, pizza crust, ginger, peaches, chocolate, and more, conjuring up delicious and beautiful comparisons for every tint. Katz's pencil-and-gouache pictures joyously convey the range of human pigmentation. Positive and useful. Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NYCopyright 1999 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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September 15, 1999
Ages 3^-6. Lena discovers that she and her friends and neighbors are all beautiful shades of brown. "I am the color of cinnamon. Mom says she could eat me up," says Lena. Then she sees everyone else in terms of delicious foods: Mom is the color of French toast. Lena's friend Sonia is the color of creamy peanut butter. Isabella is chocolate brown like the cupcakes they had for her birthday. Lena's best friend, Jo-Jin, is the color of honey. Katz wrote and illustrated the story in affirmation of her adopted Guatemalan daughter and her friends, and the diversity that surrounds them. The message is heavy, but it's made palatable by the loving words and the brightly colored, lively illustrations, which are a combination of collage, gouache, and colored pencil. The pictures of Lena and her friends and city neighbors celebrate the delicious colors of the individual people, all brown, and each one different. ((Reviewed September 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.) -
January 1, 2000
After seven-year-old Lena claims that "brown is brown," her mother, an artist, walks her around their diverse neighborhood to show her that brown skin, like Lena's own, comes in many shades. That afternoon, Lena paints her neighbors' portraits using "delicious" brown hues like cinnamon, chocolate, and honey. Mixed-media illustrations of these jazzy urbanites joyfully bring the message home.(Copyright 2000 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
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