Author: Suzanne Lang and Max Lang
Illustrator: N/A
Publisher and Year: Random House Books, 2015
Number of pages: 32
Tags: K-1, 2-3, Fiction, Diversity, Family, Amy Sanchez, Award Book
Analysis: This book explores what different families could look like. The authors created an engaging text that uses simple language that presents nonjudgmental information. Families can be a mom and dad, a single mom, a single dad, two dads, two moms, an aunt, a grandma or being adopted. This book also portrays families of parents that are married, not married, and families with step siblings. They portray almost any type of family you can imagine.
This book can serve as window to understand that there is not one correct way of what a family looks like This book portrays all different combinations of families. Children can understand that there are different family structures. This book can also serve as a mirror for children who come from different family structures. This book can also be a door to teach children about the wide variety of families.
The ideology this book explores is the diversity in family structures, but what makes a family is if you love each other. The book is strengthened by illustrations to depict the different families.
The illustrations used in this book use an open frame, so our view is from the outside. The illustrations use animal portraits to illustrate the many ways that families can be formed. There is some humor in the illustrations sometimes using goofy facial expressions as well as a varying animal combinations to form different family types. For example, when it talks about adoption it uses a sheep as the parents and a baby wolf as the child. It discusses how some children have many pets and it’s a hippo family that has many birds as pets. The illustrations add to the text and give it some humor with the use of animals.