Review by New York Times Review
THE TRICKY PART about teaching empathy to children is that you can't really teach it. You can only inspire it. Like its sister words, kindness and compassion, empathy is wakened in the soul. With very young children, it's best to tickle it awake, but it takes a light touch. That's where a good picture book comes in handy. If a child can relate to a character or become immersed in a story, she begins to have feelings outside of her own direct realm of experience. The spark of empathy, delivered gently, can then grow. These five new picture books not only embolden children to think, but inspire them to feel. "Why Am I Me?," written by Paige Britt and illustrated by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko, follows two children on their journeys home from school one day. The children don't know each other, but they share similar questions about themselves and the world around them. They wonder, as they ride a subway full of all kinds of people, why they are who they are. As the subway takes them through neighborhoods, they see people playing in parks, dancing at an outdoor concert or simply walking home from work. Their reflections on the world around them connect them to it, and to each other. The beautifully textured artwork by Qualls and Alko adroitly captures the mood and feel of a city in which diversity among people is such a natural occurrence, it doesn't need to be called out - it simply is. In "Come With Me" by Holly M. McGhee ("Matylda, Bright and Tender"), with pictures by Pascal Lemaître ("Always"; "Who's Got Game?"), a little girl, saddened by the news on TV, asks her parents what she can do to make the world a better place. Her papa takes her on a walk through the city and greets everyone he sees with a kind smile and a tip of the hat. Her mother takes her to a market full of foods from around the world, and tells her to be unafraid "because one person doesn't represent a family or a race or the people of a land." The little girl is inspired by her parents' gentle regard for the world, and invites the boy next door to walk the dog with her. She comes to understand that the goodness of people, with their small acts of kindness and bravery, makes the world a better place. Lemaitre's whimsical cartoons add some needed lightness to the earnest text. Together, the words and pictures work seamlessly to deliver a powerful message: What we do matters. Given that the epigraph of the book is a quote by Yvette Pierpaoli, the humanitarian who died while assisting refugees from Kosovo in 1999 (and who was Lemaitre's motherin-law), adults will understand that the most pressing context of the book is the need for tolerance toward displaced people around the world. That children won't get those larger implications is fine. All they need to hear is that they have a part to play, as "tiny" as it may be, in making the world a better place. "No One Else Like You," written by Siska Goeminne and illustrated by Merel Eyckerman, doesn't follow a character, but approaches diversity from a distance. "In this world there are more than seven billion people," it begins, then explores the many things those people do. Some work, some drive around. Some have tattoos. Some people are happy and some people are sad. People believe all kinds of things and practice all forms of religion. Everyone is different. Those differences, however, are what ultimately unite us: We're all different, and that's what we all have in common. The illustrations do a nice job of conveying the great diversity of people in the world, but it might have been helpful to introduce a character or point of view to help bridge the distance between young readers and that large world around them. While readers might see a relatable character or two in one of the many beautiful representations of people around the globe, it's hard to inspire true empathy from a bird's-eye view. That said, one of my new all-time favorite literary quotes is from this picture book: "People are fragile. You shouldn't drop them, because they might fall to pieces." There's a similar big-picture approach to diversity in "Most People," written by the first-time picture book author Michael Leannah and illustrated by Jennifer E. Morris ("May I Please Have a Cookie?"), but the art wisely introduces repeating characters that weave in and out to form a separate narrative that aligns beautifully with the text. "Most people," we are told, love to smile and laugh. Most people want to help other people. Most people love the sunshine. Most people are good. There are some people who aren't good, of course, but if you could line up all the good people and all the bad ones, the line of good people would be much, much longer. That simple reasoning is perfectly pitched for its young audience, who will enjoy piecing together the story-within-a-story of the two main characters as they illustrate the messages of the text within the context of their own lives. "Most People" works especially well because it doesn't just tell children to "be" good. It shows them how to "do" good. "Lovely," a debut picture book written and illustrated by Jess Hong, is a lively ode to being different. "What is lovely?" the text asks. "Lovely is different." A girl with one blue eye and one brown eye looks directly at the viewer. Then comes a series of illustrative plays on words. The word "Black" is next to a white woman wearing black clothes. On the facing page, the word "white" accompanies a black woman with white hair. On other spreads, we see a tall woman walking a short dog ("tall") opposite a short man walking with a tall dog ("short"), and a red-haired girl with a "fluffy" cat opposite a straight-haired girl with a "sleek" snake. As with any successful picture book, the art in "Lovely" doesn't just illustrate the text, it expands it. This is why a spread like "Fancy. Sporty. Graceful. Stompy" works so well: Illustrated with four sets of legs - hairy legs wearing fancy red stilettos, prosthetic legs playing soccer, black legs in pink ballet slippers, and fishnet-stockinged legs in punk-rock platform boots - it shows the multifarious world in all its glory. The common thread in all these picture books is difference - myriad ethnicities and differently abled people and all kinds of families living and working and playing side by side. For those of us who remember the 1960s and 70s, when "peace" and "harmony" were catchphrases, it's hard to imagine that children's books that show diversity are still so needed. And yet, here we are. As far as we've come, we still have a ways to go. Tolerance. Inclusion. Compassion. Kindness. Empathy. As the song says, teach your children well - or better yet, inspire them well. ? R.J. PALACIO is the author of "Wonder."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 27, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
In Leannah's latest, children are introduced to the straightforward philosophical notion that most people are good. Most people love the sunshine. Most people love the Earth. Most people love watching things grow. Leannah takes a similarly uncomplicated approach to explain why people are bad: They lie and steal. They bully and hurt and destroy. Morris' art focuses on the expressions and reactions of people experiencing good or bad situations while trying to undo biases about people who look or dress a certain way. Summing up people as good or bad is, of course, an overgeneralization, but it can help start conversations for a wide variety of matters: race, religion, gender, and class. Older children might participate in discussions revolving around consequences of actions that could be both good and bad for example, the graffiti shown here as bad could, under other circumstances, be good. This offers a fairly simple and positive perspective on the world around us.--Bratt, Jessica Anne Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Horn Book Review
While it's true that there are scary people and things in life, it's also true that "most people are good people": they "love the sunshine," "like thinking good thoughts about others," etc. This warmly illustrated picture book seeks to reassure young children who may feel anxious about negative events and behaviors they notice in the world. The messaging isn't exactly subtle, but it's effective. (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
"Most people are very good people." Leannah keeps repeating his message in a worthy yet didactic text that might be most valued in Sunday schools were it not for the surprisingly diverse and contemporary illustrations. Precise, occasionally irreverent ink-and-watercolor illustrations bring different neighborhood people into focus as they go about their days. A bearded, tattooed, white biker type politely allows an older woman with light brown skin, using a cane, to board the bus first and courteously says "After you ma'am." A little black girl hands another, who sits scowling, a flower to cheer her up. A white man with a blue mohawk waits patiently in line. A young white boy points out a lost dollar bill to a man with light brown skin waiting to buy honey. A street musician plays, a blind woman hugs her guide dog, and a grandfather and his grandson, both white, give a pie to a homeless white woman. Many of these characters are seen in their apartments that night, the Hell's Angel lookalike and the blind woman both reading in their separate apartments, the spiky-haired punk playing with his cats, and some families enjoying a meal together on the roof. Yes, the illustrations depict an almost perfect place, with diversity, inclusiveness, and basic goodness, but we can dream. Despite its textual platitudes, the visual stories here are well worth telling. (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
