Amazing Grace Author: Mary Hoffman Illustrator: Carolina Binch Publisher: Dial Books Copyright: 1991 Number of Pages: 32 Genre: Diverse Perspective
Amazing Grace is about a young, African American girl who loves all types of stories. Her favorite activity is to reenact the stories that she has heard. When her school decides to bring the play "Peter Pan" to her class, she has her heart set on the role of Peter Pan. When she tells her friends, they assure her that Peter Pan is a boy and there is no way that she could play that role. She becomes sad and her family begins to notice, so they bring her to see a play, where an African American woman plays the main role. Grace leaves the play inspired and confident. She practices hard and when the time comes, she auditions for the role of Peter Pan. Her whole class is blown away and everyone knows that she is the best pick for the role. This book is awesome to read to students to break down the gender or race walls that often hold students from participating in something they would like to do.
With this book, I would do a lesson about acceptance. I would start with an open discussion about why it is important to accept all types of people. After reading the book, I would prompt my students to write about something they would like to do that is outside of their comfort zone.
The illustrator used watercolors in this book. While the colors aren't super bright, the details in the story are appealing to the reader. Even without reading the text, it would be easy to follow the story line of this book.
This has always been one of my favorite books. I love the sweet message and lesson it brings to the reader. I like your idea on using it to teach acceptance. Teaching students to accept who they are is so important as well as accepting others even if they might be different from us.
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