It's Okay to Be Different

The book It’s Okay to Be Different is written and illustrated by Todd Parr.  It is geared toward preschool to kindergarten students.  I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. 
    The premise of this book is simple: diversity is okay and is seen everywhere someone looks.  Some examples of the different things that are shown include: having missing teeth, being bald, having wheels (like a wheelchair), and being adopted.  Each page displays a different person with different aspects of their lives that people may find peculiar. 
    This book is great for introducing the idea of diversity to children, especially at an age where children don’t really see the skin color differences.  However, children painstakingly notice differences like a wheelchair and will blurt out comments that can embarrass everyone around.  The illustrations are very colorful, so they do not depict one particular group of people and sometimes use animals to show the differences.  The book also links very silly things (like eating macaroni in the bath tub) to very serious things (like it’s okay to have different moms). 
Students may be more at ease with a serious topic if there are things that they can laugh at thrown into the mix.  This lifts some of the burden from the teacher and translates the word diversity into words that children can understand and relate to.  Children will also be able to point out people in their own lives that they see represented in the book and realize that they have already accepted the terms of diversity without consciously doing it.