Skin Again

by bell hooks, Chris Raschka (Illustrator)

Overview

From legendary author and critic bell hooks and multi-Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka comes a way to talk about race and identity that will appeal to parents of the youngest readers—in board book edition.

The skin I'm in is just a covering. It cannot tell my story. If you want to know who I am, you have got to come inside and open your heart way wide.
Race matters, but what's most important is who we are on the inside. Looking beyond skin, going straight to the heart, we find in each other the treasures stored down deep. Learning to cherish those treasures, to be all we imagine ourselves to be, makes us free.

This award-winning book celebrates all that makes us unique and different and offers a strong, timely and timeless message of loving yourself and others.

Don’t miss these other books by bell hooks and Chris Raschka!
Be Boy Buzz
Happy to Be Nappy
Grump Groan Growl
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316412933
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	08/23/2022
Pages:	26
Sales rank:	670,118
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 7.05(h) x 0.65(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

bell hooks is a world-renowned cultural critic, feminist theorist, and distinguished author and professor of English at Berea College. She has written several acclaimed children's books including Be Boy Buzz, Skin Again, and Happy to Be Nappy, all illustrated by Chris Raschka.
 
Chris Raschka is the Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator of The Hello, Goodbye Window and A Ball for Daisy. He also received a Caldecott Honor for Yo! Yes? and has written and illustrated numerous books for children, including several titles by bell hooks: Happy to Be Nappy, Skin Again, and Be Boy Buzz. A 2012 nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, he lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

"Raschka does his usual extraordinary job of illustrating highly abstract concepts: children of different colors...look at, point at, and reach out to each other, finally clasping hands in a sort of a graphic minuet."—Kirkus Reviews

"In Raschka's exuberant paintings, an unpeeled-onion motif implies the multiplicity of stories beneath a person's visible surface."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Raschka and hooks, who teamed up for Be Boy Buzz, weigh superficial appearance against deep knowing in this warm but insubstantial meditation on skin. "The skin I'm in/ is just a covering./ It cannot tell my story," say the characters. A peachy pink hand and a chocolate brown hand reach from opposite directions across the width of a spread, and grab hold of one another: "If you want to know who I am/ you have got to come inside/ and open your heart way wide." In Raschka's exuberant paintings, an unpeeled-onion motif implies the multiplicity of stories beneath a person's visible surface, and dancing children, with varied hues of skin and reckless swirls of hair, suggest common interests and love. With torn paper rectangles, Raschka establishes quilty grids on the pages, and limns his characters in wide brushstrokes within these boxy spaces. Jazzy dashes and daubs of earth-tone paint suggest African batik or Aboriginal art. Yet the multiracial characters do not merge as hooks's poem suggests. Although they gaze wide-eyed at readers and each other, most remain boxed-in, without crossing boundaries. hooks urges everyone to get "together on the inside," but without elaboration, her sentiment becomes abstract; a vague conclusion incites people to be "All real then in that place where/ skin again is one small way to see me/ but not real enough/ to be all/ the me of me or the you of you." Like the book's title, such statements sound hopeful but remain obscure. Ages 4-7. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 4-As they did in Happy to Be Nappy (1999) and Be Boy Buzz (2002, both Hyperion), hooks and Raschka have created a verbal and visual celebration. This time the subject is skin, both what it is and, more importantly, what it is not. "The skin I'm in/is just a covering./If you want to know who I am/you have got to come inside/and open your heart way wide." While the message comes across loud and clear, the author's deft handling of language renders it gently persuasive rather than didactic. Raschka's impressionistic pictures amplify the theme as they shift from large, bold cartoons showing the outside of both white and black children, and then move to the inner patchwork of thoughts and feelings that make up "real" individuals. The illustrations will invite lengthy study, as Raschka shows the children passing through the various boxes as they reach inside to know each other and then come outside to see skin again with fresh eyes. Whether shared with a group or one-on-one, this is an excellent vehicle to initiate discussion on a sensitive and perennially important subject.-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Snake(skin) and onion(skin) form the illustrative leitmotifs in this over-intellectualized musing on skin color. "The skin I'm in / is just a covering. If you want to know who I am / you have got to come inside / and open your heart way wide." Raschka does his usual extraordinary job of illustrating highly abstract concepts: children of different colors-rendered in smudgy paints-look at, point at, and reach out to each other, finally clasping hands in a sort of graphic minuet. Colored boxes alternately become clothing, frames, and X-ray film that reveals the children's inner dreams; they multiply until they form a quilt, the loosely fit-together patches alternating faces and simple, striking designs. hooks's preachily earnest text, on the other hand, while admirably articulating a vision that states that "skin . . . is one small way to see me / but not real enough to be all / the me of me or the you of you," is so removed from real children's concrete understanding as to be almost meaningless. Skip this, and buy another copy of Yo? Yes! (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Reviews