All Kinds of Families

When Bess was very young, I used to take her to Mother Goose story time at the local public library. It was fun, and a good chance to get out of the house and socialize (commiserate?) a bit with other moms.

But there was one thing that irked me. Whenever we would read stories about families, which was often, the families we read about were traditional - Mom, Dad, Baby, and maybe another child or two. I am confident that most of the children there had families that looked like that, but maybe some did not. Were their families broken - somehow less than a "real" family? And even if their own families looked like that, was it appropriate to give them the impression that all families do, or should, look like theirs? What about single-parent families, families with two moms or two dads, or with just a grandparent or aunt, or an older sibling, or multiracial through a birth or adoption....the possibilities are endless, but the portrayals were narrow.

This is why I really like The Family book by Todd Parr. He writes about all different kinds of families - those that are the same color or different colors, those that include stepparents or step siblings, those that are built through adoption, those that include two moms or dads or only one parent. This book is a great addition to any story time about families, and to the personal library of anyone with young children.