Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
While Amazing Grace is now considered a classic by some as it was written in 1991, it is a quintessential book for teaching about tolerance, equity, and gender. Amazing Grace features one of the first black heroines in children’s literature. Grace is a young girl who wants to play Peter Pan in the school play but is told she can not since she is not a boy and not White. Grace decides to stand up for what she wants by auditioning and secures the role as Peter Pan. This book provides an opportunity to discuss gendered roles in society, racism, and implicit bias. From kindergarten through fifth grade, Amazing Grace allows the space for teachers to have courageous conversations with their students.
Studies show that children start to form racially biased behaviors as young as three years old based on observations of their surrounding environments. It is critical that teachers impart positive dialogues about diversity and race in the classroom. In younger classrooms, Amazing Grace could be coupled with Persona Dolls, giving voice to dolls in underrepresented communities. In older classrooms, Amazing Grace is a good book to discuss gender equality but also the notion of color blindness and the urgency to be color aware, not color blind. Being color aware does not prohibit or limit one's capabilities, rather it enriches opportunities. As discussed through persona dolls in the younger classrooms, these topics could be discussed through journaling with older classrooms. Journaling can increase the students' understanding through language but also allow for critical engagements with these topics. Table 6 provides the window and mirror questions to use with Amazing Grace.
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
And Tango Makes Three is a children’s book that explores family diversity. As mentioned above, children notice differences as young as three and this includes different family compositions. It encourages children to accept and embrace differences and similarities amongst families. Aimed for Pk-1, this book takes place at the penguin house in the Central Park Zoo, in which two penguins named Roy and Silo were a little bit different from the others. But their desire for a family was the same. With the help of their zookeeper, Roy and Silo got the chance to welcome a baby penguin of their very own.
This book lends itself to rich conversations about how families can be defined in many ways. Traditional family trees can be uncomfortable for some children, as their family composition does not align with how the tree is depicted. Creating trees of caring with students allows for students to discuss various family compositions, such as families with two moms or two dads; stepparents; a transgender parent; adoptive parents; or foster parents. Start by clarifying ideas of what a family is on an anchor chart and using the student responses to prompt discussions about caring. Students can then draw a tree of caring in which the roots are those who care for them. The tree can then be decorated based on the student’s interests and identities. This book allows for the teacher to affirm not just the families represented in their classroom but those that are not as well. Table 7 provides the window and mirror questions to use with And Tango Makes Three.