Towards the end of the book, I again read: I was confused by her response and, upon further inquiry, realized that her response was related to my frequent communications about the value of diversity-how I love that she goes to a school that has children with all skin colors and that we live in a neighborhood that is diverse, etc.īack to Leo Lionni: I picked up “A Color of his Own” quite purposefully this evening and initially, my daughter rejected my book choice-I told her I wanted to read this book with her for a special reason and that convinced her to stick with my choice. (I usually translate all of my conversations with my daughter to English but I wanted to use her exact words in this case.) “Qué feo,” (How ugly) my daughter replied. “And I notice that all of them have brown skin-and some of them probably identify as Black, because the company is called Dance Theatre of Harlem and Harlem is a neighborhood that has a history of being a Black neighborhood.”
“There are both men and women,” she told me. “Yes,” I agreed, “they are…is there anything you notice about the dancers in the advertisement?” On a parallel note: Last week, my daughter and I passed an advertisement for Dance Theatre of Harlem and, as a long-time Alvin Ailey fan, I stopped to look at the dancers and point them out to my daughter who noted: “They are very beautiful.” “I think they want to be with someone who understands how they feel.” “So they can have a friend,” she answers. “Why do you think the chameleons want to stick together?” I ask my daughter. She isn’t sure as to why so I add “It sounds like the chameleon feels lonely sometimes since he is the only one to always change colors.”Īt the end of the book, the chameleon finds another chameleon who suggests that they stick together so that even though they keep changing colors, the two chameleons will always be the same color. My daughter answers that she would not like to change all the time…just as the chameleon feels. “Would you want to change colors all the time like a chameleon?” When I read this book to my three-and-a-half-year-old, I ask her: Lionni’s “A Color of his Own” is about a chameleon who is sad that he constantly changes colors. As a long-time reader of Leo Lionni, it surprised me that Google searches of Lionni’s books did not yield lessons plans explicitly discussing race, since many of his books speak to themes of racial identity and the concept of “being different.”
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