Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race

Perfect read for education and toddler book time. The topic is just perfect, and this holds their attention while educating them. Great for at home, preschool, school, etc. Super affordable, delivery was right on time and intact. Definitely purchasing more in the future absolutely love this book.

There is more than on way to learn. Critical thinking is SO important. Books OPEN minds. Seeking diversity increases the quality of decision making. If children of color are old enough to EXPERIENCE racism, white children are old enough to LEARN about racism. It's not meant to make people feel bad about themselves, it's meant to make people AWARE and critically think for themselves. The less you learn, the easier you are to be controlled. Reading books opens your mind to many new, exciting and challenging ways of thinking. To have empathy and compassion for others. To those who have a problem with this book, please take a step back and look at this book from a new and different perspective. This isn't teaching white children to feel guilty, it's teaching ALL children to ACKNOWLEDGE skin color but DON'T treat people differently because of stereotypes based on skin color. Don't let your fear stop an opportunity for growth and the betterment of the future. Education is elevation. The highest form of knowledge is empathy. Nelson Mandela said, "Education of the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world." Let's bravely change the world for the better together.

As someone trying to navigate early childhood teaching about race (with a two and a half year old), I am so happy to have found this book! Written with great care, it’s a fun read for a kid but gets you using language about skin color and even touching in big concepts of what-is-race and racism. Fun illustrations, great art. Simple enough that my toddler follows it overall; and then the harder concepts he can skim over but they allow me to start formulating how to talk to him about them, made me realize things that are hard for me to verbalize to him, etc. Also love this for grandmas/etc to read. It shows them how we want to talk to our children about race, models some language for them and pushes their thoughts from the “colorblind” concepts & language they taught us. They feel scared to even talk to me about talking about race with kids... and this book is a good segue, they can look and think it over and gives us a practical avenue to discuss. Note: this review is written by a white mom in an all-while family.

Reading this to my child really made me step out of my comfort zone. I guess I was raised to not point out differences among people. Either way, it's always felt so taboo to talk about people having different skin colors. It doesn't feel taboo to talk about people having different hair colors or eye colors, why should skin be taboo? Pretending that everyone is the same is harmful. Anyway, the book discusses color, the science (melanin) behind the color of our skin, the history of racism, etc. It also outright addresses different forms of racism. It has really paved the way for conversations, even things as simple as talking about how my daughter and I, as very fair-skinned people, are much more susceptible to sunburn than my niece and nephew, who are Black, because of the amount of melanin in each of our skin. Having read this book to my child, I feel much more comfortable discussing ways in which people are the same and different. I also bought a couple of other books about diversity.

I bought this to read to my 3 and 5 year old sons, and it has greatly helped me explain race in an age appropriate way. I love how the author explained racism, and it has really helped my son grasp this difficult and unsettling concept, as well as open the doors to more conversations. I’m going to buy more of the author’s books!

That is exactly what this book did. Now, I am not white nor am I black so I feel I am trying to judge this book from a neutral standpoint. But I feel this book it filled with biases as it solely depicted racism against black people and only at the hands of white people, as if all white people are the only racists and black people are the only ones who are on the receiving end. I bought the book to educate my biracial daughters on the topic but instead I ended up infuriated midway through because it implied white people as a WHOLE being racist and uses false historical context to do it. Now, this is not discrediting what black people went through and still do even now because that is the reality and it was well depicted there. HOWEVER, in an instance where a white child were to read this it would cause them to see themselves in a negative light solely because they are white and if a black child were to read this it would give them an instant bias against white people in the belief that all white people will treat them poorly. Do you see how that can ignite biases in innocent young minds at such an early age? Instead of depicting how racism looks from MULTIPLE angles, races and speaking in general this book uses biases to combat other biases which defeats the purpose of the book. I think the author should have chosen their words more wisely if they're true intent was to educate and not bash one group of people by speaking about them as a whole. What should have been emphasizing is how "not all people have this bias but some do and when they do here is how to recognize it and do something about it." We should give children the tools they need to recognize and combat racism towards ANY race or color when they see it happen. There should have been scenarios depicting it occurring at the hands of multiple races, colors, groups and equally depicting multiple groups on the receiving end. So this book did a poor job of combating the root of it. If a child reads this with their innocent mind they would walk away with biases they likely didn't have in the first place. I will be returning IMMEDIATELY.

I did not like this book for my 3 year old. It seemed inappropriate for children.

Good for preschool/primary

This is one of my daughter's favorite books. It's a great way to introduce race to a young mind.

Esta colección es excelente para hablar sobre nuestra piel y el respeto a todos. Versión en cartón excelente para niños pequeños.

We bought this for our daughter to try and start the conversation about race with her and it’s a really good starting point. The images and words are clear and it explains things in a very matter of fact way. I’ve recommended this book to others too. It’s a difficult conversation and concept to explain to a kid and this book really helped