Colorfull

About the Book:
Why be colorblind when we can be colorFULL instead? 

Imani and Kayla are the best of friends who are learning to celebrate their different skin colors. As they look around them at the amazing colors in nature, they can see that their skin is another example of God’s creativity! This joyful story takes a new approach to discussing race: instead of being colorblind, we can choose to celebrate each color God gave us and be colorFULL instead.

My Review:
Colorfull was an adorable picture book that celebrates the color all around us. The colorful illustrations draw the kids into looking at and enjoying all of the colors they see around them. It then makes the point that if we can be excited for and enjoy all of the colors we see around us, why would we then pretend to be color blind when it comes to our skin color? This book takes a gentle approach to celebrating people’s differences. Not only do I feel it was well written, but also well illustrated.

Just for a bit of background, I requested a copy due to some personal relevance. I’m often one who says that I don’t “see” color when it comes to people. It doesn’t matter to me what color someone’s skin is when it comes to being friends. My husband and I are both “vanilla” as the book puts it, but my husband Nate comes from a family where 5 out of 7 kids were adopted. The youngest is “chocolate” from Ethiopia. The other ones adopted (with exception to Nate) are biracial. How do you explain the different skin colors to children without making it all about race? I believe this book does a great job of answering just that.  After all, we are all the human race and within that we all have our different colors. It challenges us to look at our differences as wonders of God’s creative creation. Not only do we all have different skin shades, but we have different hair, facial features, and more that make us all unique.

I would highly recommend this to all families as a great way to celebrate our differences. Whether in the home or out in the world, we all come across people that look different from ourselves. This book tastefully and creatively introduces children to those differences and treats them as a beautiful piece of God’s creation.

 

Tiny-Tot Review:
Aware that it’s important to see what kids think of the book and not just an adult perspective, I called on the help of my little book expert Addy. Addy loves to be read to and has the greatest attention span for books I’ve ever seen in a three-year-old. Addy loved the pictures in this story, commenting on every page. She loved that you could see people’s faces (and a dog’s), through the bubbles on one of the pages. Of course, she also loved the page with the ice cream cones as well and had a lot to talk about it. She closed her eyes for the page that says to imagine if everything was dark and there was no color. This was not a very long story, and the pictures complimented it well. Addy did quite a bit of interacting with this story and sharing her own opinions when relevant (ex: favorite color and ice cream flavors). As soon as I finished the book she asked if I could keep reading to her, so it certainly got her book excitement going. I would definitely say Addy gave the story two thumbs up 🙂

*I received a complimentary copy of this book in hopes of an honest review. I was not obligated to write a positive review. Thoughts and opinions expressed are mine alone