The Colors of Us

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The Colors of Us is a children book written and illustrated by Karen Katz. Published in September 15, 1999, the book introduces a positive and affirming look at skin color from an artist's perspective.

Plot

The Colors of Us book cover

Seven-year-old Lena, a budding artist, wanting to paint a self-portrait. She wants to utilize brown paint paint for her skin. However, when she and her mom go for a stroll through the area, Lena discovers that brown color comes in various shades and perceives how every individual is  a wonderful shade and not quite the same as all others.[1]

The readers are acquainted with Lena’s established world of friends and family, from the playground to the park, to the familiar pizza parlor to the flavor store. She even notices her sitter and a companion who lives close to the playground. Everybody Lena sees has diverse skin. She portrays the changing shades with articles of food or some other thing she considers colorful. For example, while her cousin Kyle is “reddish-brown like the leaves of fall,” her friend Isabella is chocolate brown like birthday cupcakes.

Lena is interested by each brown shades that she sees, and can hardly wait to get back home to paint. The varying skin tones give her a more profound knowledge and balanced view into the different cultures around her, liberated from judgment. At the point when she and her mom get back from their walk, Lena visits  her friends and sets out her yellow, red, white, and black paints. Cautiously combining the tones as one in an unexpected way, Lena works on reproducing all that she learned and recounts each color name out loud to herself as she paints.[2]

Inspiration

The book was inspired by Karen Katz little girl, Lena. She is from Guatemala and is brown skinned, a different skin tone than her. When she was about 5 years old, she inquired as to why they were a different color. The following day, when she went to her school, she saw every one of the children and how delightful they were, and thow many different shades of brown there wereand she wanted to praise the magnificence and the difference that these children embody.Katz said that by having a child who has a different color skin and is from another country, you will encounter the world in an alternate manner. At times people would look at them and she could see they were attempting to sort out what her identity was. She hopes that people take away from this book a chance to converse with one another regarding why each person appears to be unique, and where they come from and who they are It's a springboard to discussions about various ideas about race.[3]

References

  1. The Colors of Us. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.
  2. Robertson, Rachel (2018). “The Colors of Us” Book Review. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.
  3. Albert, Maddy (2020). ‘The Colors of Us’ Is the Perfect Book to Teach Your Kids to Celebrate Diversity. Retrieved on December 29, 2020.