What if your best friend were blue?

Vera Kochan

Book - 2011

Demonstrates, in simple text and illustrations, that what people do and how they act is much more important than what they look like.

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Subjects
Genres
Picture books
Published
New York : Marshall Cavendish Childrens 2011.
Language
English
Main Author
Vera Kochan (-)
Edition
1st Marshall Cavendish Pinwheel bk. ed
Physical Description
unpaged : ill
ISBN
9780761458975
Contents unavailable.
Review by School Library Journal Review

PreS-K-A boy wonders what the world would be like if people were different colors. His best friend might be blue, but he would still play soccer. If the boy were lost, a green policewoman would help him find his parents. A yellow doctor, a purple fireman, and a red teacher would continue to do their jobs despite their color. His orange babysitter would be just as much fun as ever. He concludes that "these people don't care what color you are, either....They like you just because you're YOU!" Full-color acrylic illustrations are done in a cartoon style, and the simple text makes the lesson on tolerance accessible to youngsters. This book could be used as an introduction to Emily Jenkins's The Little Bit Scary People (Hyperion, 2008), which would deepen a discussion of tolerance and identity.-Mary Jean Smith, Southside Elementary School, Lebanon, TN (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review

An offstage narrator asks a child questions about skin color: "What if your best friend were blue?" "What if a policewoman were green?" The child's answers ("Even if my best friend were blue, he'd still play soccer with me") sound canned; the text amounts to what well-meaning adults want children to hear. Hospitable acrylics provide a more kid-friendly vehicle for the message. Copyright 2010 of The Horn Book, Inc. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

This simple picture book is intended to teach both color awarenessof shades such as blue, green and yellowand color-blindness in terms of skin tones. It doesn't work.The book begins by asking, "What if your best friend were blue?" The child narrator answers, "Even if my best friend were blue, he'd still play soccer with me." The nominal dialogue continues: "What if a policewoman were green?" "Even if a policewoman were green, she'd still help me find my mom and dad." The book continues exactly like this, featuring a yellow doctor, a purple fireman, a red teacher and an orange babysitter. The intended message of this title is highjacked by two little words, repeated again and again: "even if." This phrase, suggesting as it does that a best friend would still play soccer despite his blue-ness and the policewoman still provide a helping hand despite her green-ness, does not undermine homogeneity, but rather confirms whiteness as humankind's default skin color. Further contributing to this notion is the fact that the main character is white, as are all the other adults and children who are not being used to demonstrate a particular color; skin tones aside from white that actually show up in the real world are absent entirely. Even the lessons in identifying colors fall apart here. The policewoman who is supposed to be green actually first appears as an off-putting shade of yellow.A big miss. (Picture book. 4-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.