My last blog reviewed two books on families which showcase the diversity of families in gorgeous photographs of families, both doing everyday things and celebrating special events.
Families Are Different was written and illustrated by Nina Pelligrini, a mother of two adopted daughters who said this book was inspired by feelings expressed by one of her daughters.
The book’s characters are two daughters from Korea and their two white parents. With its simply-drawn illustrations and its matter-of-fact narration by one of children, the book is well-suited to younger children but makes a point that will be appreciated by older children as well.
The book talks about the child doing ordinary, everyday things, including spending affectionate time with her parents and sister and attending kindergarten with her two best friends.
One daughter feels her family is “different” because her friends look like their parents, and she often hears people say to other moms, “Your child looks so much like you!”
She talks to her mom, who tell her that there are different kinds of families, but they are all held together by “a special kind of glue called love”.
The girl begins looking around her, and notices that: one boy in her class looks like his African-American father but not like his Euro-American mother, one boy’s family is a mom and a sister but no dad, a family of just a dad and daughter, one girl who lives at two houses because of her parents’ divorce, a boy who lives with his sister and his grandparents, and a girl who lives with her father, stepmother, and younger half-sister.
There is a large family where all members look alike, but also a family whose members all look quite different from one another even though they are a “typical” same-race family of a mom and dad and two kids. There is also a family who has an adopted daughter and a birth son.
Kids may think of their own families as different because of adoption, but never considered the many reasons that many—in fact most—families have something that makes them different from the “typical” family often portrayed in the media.
The point is made in the narrator’s conclusion:
“Now I don’t think I’m strange at all. I’m just like everyone else…I’m different!”
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