FM Family's Reviews > Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race

This book felt effective to me as a way to start kids talking about race, without being dry or overwhelming in a way that makes it hard to keep attention. It talks in brief about how white people a long time ago came up with ideas that different races were better than others, how that makes no sense, and the contemporary ways in which that leads to decisions and actions that aren't fair and aren't right. It encourages kids to stand up when they see racism happening and emphasizes that skin colour doesn't tell us anything about what a person can or can't do or does or doesn't like. My 4.5 year old was keen to read it, despite it not being a "storybook". I always worry that with books like this, that being explicit about ways in which people are stereotyped by race (for instance the example of one kid with darker skin always having to be the "bad guy") might backfire and just give kids ideas about more ways to be terrible to eachother, but my understanding is that that level of specificity is actually crucial and helpful to get kids to see these issues in their own lives, so hopefully that's the case!