Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race

I cried. Fantastic book. Will be buying for all future baby showers.

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!

As a white American parent, I really love how this book explains racism to my children. My kids don’t yet have firsthand experience with racism in the real world, so trying to explain to them what it is, why it exists, and how it can manifest, is just really difficult. Add in my oldest being autistic and highly sensitive, and it’s even tougher to find the right words to explain in a way that doesn’t leave her emotionally escalated. This book explains anti-Black racism in a way that is concise and age-appropriate. I like that it doesn’t sugar-coat anything or try to add in a happy ending; instead, it treats the reader like they’re smart enough to understand the truth, and to sit with ambiguity. It isn’t too long or wordy, yet manages to communicate the important ideas to my children. And it isn’t scary or graphic, yet still explains clearly that racism is hurtful and harmful. It evokes empathy for those experiencing racism, without frightening or horrifying my children. I think the one caveat to keep in mind is that this book explicitly focuses on white racism against Black people. This is helpful to me, because that’s the most common kind of racism my white kids will have to content with while growing up in the Southern US, and because it’s so easy to extrapolate what the book says to discrimination against other POC. However, because this book doesn’t directly address any other races, I worry that it’s excluding readers who are neither white nor Black. It wouldn’t have been hard to note that racism against other races exists, or that non-white people can still believe in a racist worldview and participate in racism against other people. Obviously parents can explain this to their kids, but it seems like a missed opportunity to make the book inclusive for non-white and non-Black children. I hope the authors will consider eventually creating a second edition that explicitly includes other races. From my experience growing up as a white kid in the US, I know that it’s VERY difficult for children’s media to accurately depict racism to white kids. Most of what I accessed as a child underplayed the historical horrors and harmful impacts so much that racism came across as much less dangerous and hurtful than it is in reality. And it tended to obfuscate the causes of racism and attribute it to simple ignorance, which led to oversimplification of a complex social issue, while also not actually equipping us to do anything about it in the real world, and implying that racism would die out once everyone in the world was educated. So, I appreciate that this book doesn’t do that. It doesn’t oversimplify or sugarcoat things in a way that might lead kids to draw incorrect conclusions; instead, it just shows kids the tip of the iceberg, without any kind of qualification or false resolution. I personally think this approach will help my kids avoid feeling like they’ve been lied to, once they get older and learn some of the more upsetting details about racism, which is something a lot of young white people deal with when they realize the huge gaps in between what they’ve been taught, and reality. I’ve also been able to build on the way the book explains racism to answer questions my kids have about other forms of discrimination and prejudice, such as ableism and sexism. I love the way they explain it - that a long time ago, some people made up a false story that one kind of person is better than another, and that it’s not a true story, but some people believe it. And I like that it directly addresses the worldview and beliefs behind racism, rather than simply focusing on external behaviors. Let me also just say that, to commenters claiming this book will make white kids feel bad about themselves: that’s not true. There’s nothing in this book to make a white child feel like anything is wrong with them personally. The book calls out the “made-up story” of racism as being wrong, and the discrimination as being wrong, but at no point does it claim or imply that white people are bad. It doesn’t even say that white racists are bad! It just says that racism is wrong, but that it exists, and that it harms people - which is exactly what a parent buying this book for their kid probably wants them to know.

Kids don’t come seeing skin color differences or judging another kid’s race. Sadly, someone older has to instill that racism within. Happily, little kids all played together. Initially, older kids chose their team by race to play basketball. I broke that up when I had my turn — picking the BEST players!😊 At our Public Library I will set up the Dr. King book display with a Kids section and an Adults one in January!

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