This was a very long book review and it actually reviewed several books that focused on multiracial and biracial children in literature. Fortunately, there was a portion of the article that focused specifically on Arnold Adoff’s book Black is Brown is Tan. Reading this article expanded my understanding and appreciation for Adoff’s book because the article acknowledged so many different areas of children’s biracial literature. The article reviewed books that were good choices for children and those that were lacking in different areas. Adoff’s book had a couple of different views.
I wrote my own review of the book before reading any professional reviews because I wanted my mind to be clear and unbiased when I was critiquing the book. It is rewarding and uplifting to find that some of the same points that I made in my amateur review of the book were echoed in the scholarly article. Karen Sands O’Connor agrees that effective books should focus on more than just the differences between parents. Adoff’s book was a good example of this. In Black is Brown is Tan, the family is the focus. The child is not the focus, the cultural differences of the parents are not the focus. The focus is totally on the way the family works and plays together to be happy. Differences between the parents are acknowledged in illustrations and text, but that is about the extent of it. Rather than showing how the family has characteristics from the white father and some characteristics from the black mother, the family is shown as one individual entity.
The article includes many different references to texts about multicultural and biracial children. Besides Arnold Adoff’s book Black is Brown is Tan, another book that I reviewed was mentioned in this scholarly article. Two Mrs. Gibsons by Toyomi Igus is another picture book for children that focuses on biracial families. This book wasn’t quite as perfect as Adoff’s, however. In Adoff’s book, the family is shown as on familial unit. In Two Mrs. Gibsons, however, the author chose to identify those things from both sides of the biracial family that were different. The Japanese mother and the African American grandmother do typical Japanese and African American things throughout the book. The family looks more like it has two different sides instead of one concise unit. It is my experience and the experiences of some of my biracial friends that this is not really the case. My family is not white sometimes and black sometimes, it is just always my family. I think that Black is Brown is Tan does a much better job of conveying this idea that Two Mrs. Gibsons.
Overall, the article was interesting and I found my self in agreement with much that the author had to say. She was able to focus her article on many books and the ways they have impacted biracial literature. Her review included good parts of books and parts of books that she thought could have been better.
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