6 books that can help you teach your kids how to be an ally (Updated, July 2024)
Help Them See Belonging in Their Own Story
Continue the conversation with a personalized adventure that celebrates differences, inclusion, and the qualities that make every child unique.
Teaching children to be allies (someone who stands with and speaks up for minorities and discriminated communities) can be a difficult topic to broach or explain, especially to younger children. One of the most important ways to do this is to normalize differences and teach them how to include all kinds of people, races, and preferences in their lives. A great way to introduce them to this is to use books.
The following list of children’s books features a diverse set of characters, and/or have plots that center around tolerance and inclusion. Moreover, these books tactfully broach difficult topics like racism, privilege, slavery, the LGBTQIA community, and more. So grab these for your kids and get reading!
1. Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story about Racial Injustice
Marianne Celano (Author) Marietta Collins (Author) Ann Hazzard (Author)
Something Happened In Our Town follows the story of two households - one white, and one black, that recount conversations about a police shooting in their town. In the white household, Emma, a little girl asks her parents questions about what happened, and why the Police officer shot a black man, and the same happens in the black household with Josh. The story takes the kids through a natural progression of questions about race, racism, racial bias, and systemic oppression. The story teaches kids how to recognize unfair racial bias and even broaches the topics of white privilege and slavery.
With detailed illustrations and thoughtful conversations, the book is definitely a great way to start explaining complex topics to your child and teach them how to identify unfair patterns. On the other hand, the conversations are fairly bland and informational: more emotional responses might have increased the impact of the message. The book does have extra tips and notes for parents and teachers to navigate a post-reading conversation and includes questions that you can use to have an extended discussion about race.
Innosanto Nagara (Author)
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General Questions
Manimal Tales is a publisher of beautifully illustrated personalized books. We have personalized books for children and adults. From birthday books to new baby tales, and from bedtime stories to ABC books, we have custom books for all occasions!
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Personalized books (or custom books as they are sometimes referred to) allow the reader to become the hero of the story - literally.
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The short answer is that it depends on the personalized book title in question!
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In some of our books like Dreamland and What Will I Be? the (the An ABC Story) your loved one's name is printed on every page.
In our Manimal Tales series, in addition to your child's name, you can select an avatar that looks like your child.
In our custom baby tales, Your Baby's Story and Your Baby's Story (Sibling version), you have to enter names and select avatars for the parents and the siblings as well.
And for our PhotoStories, you can further customize the books by uploading and adding your own photos directly into the book. The stories have been written to incorporate the photos as part of the story itself.
Whichever personalized book you do choose, we guarantee your loved one's will love our custom tales just as much as we do!
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