Lara Martinez

SLIS 5960

Elementary Book:

Hamanaka, S. (1994). All the colors of the earth. New York: William Morrow & Company.

Information About the Book:

From Publishers Weekly
With her lyrical text and splendid oil paintings, Hamanaka ( The Journey ; Screen of Frogs ) offers a hymn to children everywhere, who are "all the colors of the earth and sky and sea." Extraordinary, light-filled paintings accompany the single curving line of text on each page. A girl whose complexion is described as the "crackling russets of fallen leaves" turns a cartwheel in a sparkling autumnal scene. An Asian boy stares into the eyes of a lion, and both subjects are the color of the "whispering golds of late summer grasses." Two bronze-haired boys play at the seashore, their skin the color of "the tinkling pinks of tiny seashells by the rumbling sea." Hamanaka salutes the varieties of "hair that flows like water" and "hair like bouncy baby lambs." She shows adults showering children with love that "comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat," and "amber and ivory and ginger and sweet." These joyful illustrations amply celebrate the richness and diversity of the world's ethnic heritages. All ages.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 1-4-A poetic picture book and an exemplary work of art. The simple text describes children's skin tones and hair in terms of natural phenomena ("...the roaring browns of bears"; "...hair that curls like sleeping cats in snoozy cat colors") and then describes love for these children with rich colors and flavors ("...love comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat..."). Hamanaka's oil paintings are all double-page spreads filled with the colors of earth, sky, and water, and the texture of the artist's canvas shines through. The text is arranged in undulant waves across each painting. This might be paired with Arnold Adoff's Black Is Brown Is Tan (HarperCollins, 1973), for younger readers, or his All the Colors of the Race (Lothrop, 1982), for older students, or read alone in celebration of diversity.
Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ages 3-8. How better to celebrate ethnic diversity than to look to children, the hope of the future? This glorious picture book, with its spare, lyrical text, does just that. Illustrated with oil paintings of youngsters of all ages, the carefully worded text rolls in serpentine swirls across pages on which children "who come in all the colors of the earth" laugh, smile, ponder, join hands, and rejoice in the common pleasure of being young. Upbeat and exuberant, this is a selection to share. Deborah Abbott

From Kirkus Reviews
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text--``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''-- printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Information about the Author:

Sheila Hamanaka, author-illustrator of All the Colors of the Earth, lives in Tappan, New York**I searched and searched, but I could not find any more information about this wonder author/illustrator but this one statement. She writes a lot about racial tolerance, her background in telling the stories of her family’s hardships in the Japanese Internment Camps during WWII and celebrating the differences in cultures.

Before Reading Activity:

Under the Skin
Use an exercise the American Defamation League does with 4-year-olds (it can apply to any young child). Each child is given a lemon and given time to "get to know their lemon." The children spend about 10 minutes playing with the lemon, rolling it around, throwing it or whatever else they want to do. Then, all the lemons are put into a bucket, and the children are asked to find their lemon. Amazingly, they always can. When asked how they knew it was theirs, the children can point out specific characteristics of their lemon, such as lumps, bruises or color differences. The leader notes that people can also be different but once you get to know them, they become special to you.

Then they peel the lemons. After dealing with the issue of "naked lemons," a concept sure to crack up any normal 4-year-old, they ask the children to again pick out their lemons. This time they can't because they all look the same. And that, is the point. We're all the same on the inside.

From http://preschoolerstoday.com/resources/articles/tolerance.htm

May 20, 2003

After Reading Activity:

Self Portrait

Objectives

v Students will continue to develop a sense of self.

v Students will examine race and differences.

v Students will foster color exploration and creativity.

Materials

v Large paper

v Multicultural Paints

v Paint brushes

v Book: All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka

v Paper plates for mixing paints

Procedure

v Read All the Colors of the Earth , by Sheila Hamanaka.

v Talk about why people are different colors (melanin in the skin).

v Allow children to hold their hands next to other children's hands and compare who is darker and lighter.

v Demonstrate how to mix paints and find what matches your skin color best.

v Allow children to explore with the paints and create their own self portraits in the art center.

v Trace children's hands and cut out. Allow them to paint hands in their color, laminate and use for job charts, or whatever else you can think of.

v Talk openly about how a long time ago, and sometimes even today, people were/are treated differently because of their skin color. Invite children to respond as to whether or not that makes sense.