I Am Latino: The Beauty in Me

I Am Latino: The Beauty in Me
Written by: Sandra L. Pinkney
Photographs by: Myles C. Pinkney
Published by Little, Brown, and Company in NY in 2007
Genre: Informational Text, Concept Book (language and senses) (Bilingual Multicultural Work)
Ages: Grades K-2

Summary: This work is dedicated to celebrating Latinos. It deals with the language, music, the love of their families, and the rich foods that are part of their culture. The text and pictures alternate in that the first page will have a picture of a Latino child and read "I am Latino. Can you sense the beauty?" and the next page or so will detail an element of their culture, then readers see another Latino child with the same text as before and learn about another aspect of their culture until all of the aforementioned aspects are spoken of. This book introduces young children to simplistic elements of Latino culture in a format that will definitely grab their attention.

Response: This book does and excellent job at letting children know that no matter what their nationality, they are beautiful. I think that many times in our society we let our feelings about immigration affect our judgement of people before we get to know them and this book lets us see that Latinos are just like everyone else--beautiful. Although this children's book might not explicitly make that connection, I think that adults can learn that from this work.

The photographs in this work are excellent. I tend to enjoy more realistic art, especially in illustrations in picture books, so the photography in this book definitely suited my taste, as photographs are as realistic as illustrations can be! The colors in this book are vibrant. Each page has a new bright color on it, which will very likely intrigue younger students as will the many faces in the photographs. None of the pictures in this work are double-page spreads, but in many cases there are several pictures on each page and some of the pictures also have colorful borders to attract even more attention to them.

The text on the pages where students will learn about Latino culture have one large word an a few smaller ones. For example, on the family page, there is a large word--
See" and then the rest of the sentence is small--"the love in my family (mi familia)" (15). Then the book goes on to give adjectives for certain family members and even translates some of them into the Spanish words as well. This is the case for the entirety of the book.

Teaching Connections: Teachers could use this work to help ELL children become engaged in their reading because they would be learning about elements of their culture that they already know about, but would also be reading several English words. If their interest level is high, their reading ability might be improved.

Teachers could also use this book as a way to help ensure that Latino children are not excluded by others in the class. The teacher could read this allowed and help English-speaking students understand a little more about Latino culture. This would be especially helpful if the Latino students are shy and do not talk with their peers often.

This work could also be used as an introduction to a multicultural unit for younger children as it provided excellent information, but in a way that will not overwhelm younger students.

This book is also great for teaching adjectives. The teacher could read this work and then have students chose another culture that they might be interested in and then the teacher could bring in information about dances, families, language, and foods that are a part of that culture. Then the class could write a small book together about those elements of that particular culture and add in their own descriptive adjectives given by the students. The teacher could then make copies of the "book" the class wrote and have students illustrate the pages. Another idea is to take pictures of students in the classroom dressed like the people from that culture and doing those activities outlines in the book they helped write!

(Image retrieved from http://www.getcaughtreading.org/images/IAmLatino.jpg on 7 April 2008)