Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
We Are Family
Illustrator: Ryan Wheatcroft
Poetry Picture Book
For ages 4 to 7
Tiger Tales, 2017 ISBN: 978-1680100549
Families come in all shapes and sizes. There can be many children or only one. There can be one parent or two. There can be two fathers, or two mothers, or one of each. Sometimes grandparents or other relatives raise children. Sometimes foster parents give children a loving home. The one thing that all families have in common is that they “always stick together” no matter what, “in good times and bad.”
This book shows us how ten very different families spend their day from the moment they get up in the morning, to the time when they are all snug in their beds at night. One thing that is common to all ten families is that mornings are busy. Everyone has to get dressed, eat their breakfast, and get ready for school and work. We see one family eating their breakfast in bed, while others sit at a table. Another family eats their toast while they sit on the sofa and watch the television.
When it is time to leave for school, the children head out on foot, or they travel on buses, on trains, in a car, and on bicycles. In one family the children walk by themselves, while in the others they are accompanied by their grownups.
Next we see how the families cope when one of their members is unwell. No matter who is feeling under the weather, everyone rallies around to “take special care” of the sick person.
We go on to see the families enjoying a vacation, we see how they cope when bad things happen, and we see them sharing those special moments that strengthen the bonds between them.
What is wonderful about this book is that we get to see how alike families are, no matter how many members there are or where they are from. We see diversity in all its glory; as young readers get to know the families presented on every spread they will appreciate that even though the families we see look so different, in each one “the love is all the same.”
The wonderful illustrations in this book are accompanied throughout by lines of rhyming verse that beautifully compliment the wonderful images.
