All the Colors We Are/Todos Los Colores de Nuestra Piel: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color/La Historia de Por Qué Tenemos Diferentes Colores de P

Our culture does not know how to talk about race. This book is an amazing way to help children, not to mention adults, talk about race in simple and scientific terms. This book helps adults move through their own fears and talk about race in the matter-of-fact way children experience the world.

My 3-year old began asking lots of questions about the different people we know and their skin color. I looked everywhere for a simple, informative book. He loved the photos and the explanations that the color you are comes from 1) your family 2) the sun and 3)melanin. At the end the books asks where you think your ancestors came from (for instance somewhere very sunny). Any my son immediately replied: "Somewhere dark!" Indeed, he's right and now he understands why we come in different colors and sees this as interesting and wonderful. I read many other books on the subject but most are a celebration of racial differences which is great but did not help address a natural curiousity as to why. I highly recommend this book for those with young children asking questions about why people have different skin colors.

We live in a very small town and my 3 year old daughter goes to an in-home babysitter with only three other children, she is also the oldest child there. After routine T.V. time and Christmas shopping at the mall this past holiday season, my daughter began to ask questions. In early January, we bought a new car and the business manager that we did all of the paperwork with had a darker complexion, my daughter asked "mom, what color is he?". This embarrassed my husband and the next day I ordered "all the colors we are". My daughter likes the book because of all the pictures of real kids. She also has begun to point at different skin colors in the book and say "this one is pretty" and similar comments. She doesn't understand the melanin section yet but overall she likes the book and asks us to read it to her over and over.

This is a great book for use in the classroom. It allows students to gain a better understanding of the differences among us and that these differences are not always black or white. This book is a good book to use in a literature focused unit on Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli.