A Picture Book a Day for a Year: Day 151

Picture Book: Shades of People

Authors: Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly            

Photographer: Shelly Rotner

Summary: This colorful book explores various skin tones of people, even in the same family. We are copper, cocoa, tan, sandy, peach, pink, creamy, and so many other lovely colors. Vibrant photographs, mostly of smiling children, exhibit the variety, beauty, and joy in being human.  

Hanna’s Comments: The abundance of God’s wondrous imagination is cleverly demonstrated by our numerous skin tones. How sad that we too often either don’t notice or use skin color to categorize or judge. Celebrate God’s creativity, love of diversity, and loving design of our skin with this book! A picture book with this same theme and beautiful illustrations is All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka. Like the featured book, it explores various skin colors and compares them to colors of other natural (earthly) things.  

Publisher & Date of Publication: Holiday House, 2010

Age & Grade Appropriateness: 3 and up, Pre and up

# of Pages: 32

Available in Spanish? Not at prsent

Formats other than Book: None at present

PBT Category: Non fiction

PBT Topics this Book Connects with: abundance/bounty, acceptance, awe, babies/children, beauty, creation, creativity/imagination/ingenuity, differences, diversity, humanity, image of God, individuality/uniqueness, judgment/judges/judging, prejudice, race relations/racism, rainbows, variety

Scripture Connections: Let us make humankind in our image… God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:26, 28)

Idea(s) for Application: Use this book in a lesson on God’s creative diversity or any lesson addressing judging, racism or prejudice.