The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler

The Skin You Live In  Author:  Michael Tyler  Illustrator: David Lee Csicsko  Publisher: Chicago Children's Museum  Copyright: 04/01/2005  Number of Pages: 32   Genre: Diverse Perspectives

The Skin You Live In is a children's book about how all skin colors are beautiful and important.  The first few pages of the book are about loving your own skin and how all skin colors are loved.  The book transitions into the different color skins that the reader may have, using positive descriptions.  It also uses kind words to describe that whether the reader is tall or short, thick or thin, all skin is good skin.  It is great for students to hear books like this for reassurance that it's okay to not look like everyone else!

While this is a great book, it is not ideal for teaching most standards due to the long, complicated words.  However, it would work great for teaching standard RF 20.1.a:  a. Recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence (e.g., first word, capitalization, ending punctuation). The book has many long sentences, requiring students to have to search for the end of the sentence.

The illustrations in this book, like the text itself, includes very diverse people.  It appears that the illustrator did not draw or paint the illustrations on paper, but possibly used a graphic design program to make them.  They are bright and have a large array of colors, making the book appealing to students.