Families

[library_mama]

Families by Susan Kuklin This beautiful nonfiction book is just the ticket for children curious about families. Kuklin interviews New York children ages 4 to 14 from a multitude of backgrounds and photographs their families. The children tell us in their own words what they don’t like but mostly like about their family and their siblings. The families are lots of different colors and mixed; different religions; with straight, gay, divorced and single parents, and adopted, only, and multiple siblinged children. The kids are charmingly passionate about their families, and the pictures (staged by the kids) tell a lot about the families. They’ve included meaningful pictures from family photo albums, too, of grandparents or parents when they were young. Each family is a double spread, with large pictures and a fair amount of text. This is the only thing I could consider a drawback – I am still on the lookout for something like this on a preschool level. With my non-English teacher viewpoint, I’d think a third or fourth grader could read it independently, and a couple years younger would enjoy it as a read-aloud. Still, for pictures of real families from the kids’ point of view, this is amazing.

Comments

[arovd.livejournal.com]

oooo! Thank you!!!

[sapphireone.livejournal.com]

I thought you might appreciate... the gay family is biracial, and the lesbian family quotes the girl as feeling lucky to have two moms.

[arovd.livejournal.com]

added to my amazon wishlist already. :)

[nubianamy.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall a very similar display of photos and captions from the mid-90s called Love Makes A Family. We hosted it at MSU for Pride Week.