The Colors of Us, written and illustrated by Karen Katz, is about a little girl named Lena who wants to paint a self-portrait using brown paint for her skin tone. The simple statement "brown is brown" leads Lena and her mother to take a stroll down their block to help Lena understand that there are a plethora of browns all around her. The Color of Us can be defined as a type of memoir picturebook. It gives an account of someone's personal life while adding pictures for likeness and representation. The use of every color brown sheds light on the exact meaning of the title as well as providing visual examples for readers who may be just as curious to know why brown is not just brown and what "cinnamon" and "toffy" actually look like.
This book allows the reader to fully grasp the concept of how many colors truly surround us all. Karen Katz shows an exciting and creative way of describing everyday people that we always see to make them more noticeable by giving them their own personal colors that represent their skin tone. It was an enjoyable read and could be used in a classroom for the ages of 2-6 to help shed light on multiple cultures as well as helping students become more aware of the different colors that surround them. A similar book that can be read would be The Skin You Live In by David Lee Csicsko. Other books written by Karen Katz are Where Is Baby's Belly Button, My First Kwanzaa, and Counting Kisses.
Classroom activities:
1.) Have each child take a stroll, with their parent, down their own street and scout the neighborhood. Have the child write down a description of three people they notice, each a different color than the previous, and paint or color a portrait with their written description next to it. After reading the story aloud, together, have each child present their portrait and explain why the people they chose stood out to them.
Goals:
- Allow students to become well aware of all of the different colors of the world around them.
- Help students begin to gain access to learning about multiple cultures and races.
2.) Provide each child with a box of crayons or markers. Ask the class to draw a portrait of themselves. After each child has completed their portrait, collect them. Read the story aloud together and then present each portrait. As a fun game, place one picture at a time on the board and ask the children to look around their classroom at their peers. When they believe they know who the portrait represents, they will raise their hands. Call on a child to answer (not the actual artist) and have the rest of the class agree or disagree with their peer. Keep the game going until all artists are revealed.
Goals:
- Help students to become aware of the different colors surrounding them in every environment they walk through.
- Allow students to express, creatively, how they envision themselves.
Bibliography:
Katz, K. (2000). The Colors of Us. Henry Holt and Company.
I love this selection. You used a crayon box idea, have you ever heard of the crayon box poem, video, and activity? This would be great for this book and multiculturalism books. It is where students draw a picture using only one color, then create that same picture using all of the colors in the crayon box. Students discuss which is prettier or complete, and the result is that when it is just one color the picture is boring, when all the colors come together the picture is complete. Another idea, even though I love both of your ideas, is again to use crayons. This time the students pick their favorite color out of a box of 8, do a bar graph to see how many people like the same color, how many like more than one color, and you can explain how many of us are the same, and many are different. Then you can go into what represents each of those colors, and add them to a picture...like grass is green, sky is blue, clouds white, etc. if we only had one color the picture would again not be complete.
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