Whoever You Are

1997, Houghton Mifflin

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Mem Fox

Fox (1945 - ) has written more than 40 children's books and a number of books for adults. Her autobiographical sketch begins with "I come from a long line of preachers and teachers on my mother’s side of the family; and atheists, teachers and journalists on the other side." Even though she's an award winning author, she states quite clearly her first love is teaching.

Leslie Staub

Staub is best known for her paintings of Louisiana cultural and political figures in the style of Orthodox Church icons.

Whoever You Are  was Staub's first gig illustrating children's books, but she continued to write and illustrate a number of other books.

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Book Synopsis

Whoever You Are reminds us that the similarities in our hearts, in the ways we love and laugh or cry cannot be hidden by the  differences in our skin color, homes, schools, or languages. The narrative is gentle with appealing folk-artsy illustrations of children and families from around the world.

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Picture book, 32 pages. A wonderful, gentle introduction for children about our similarities and differences.

Learning Options

Family Read Aloud Time
Whoever You Are is a wonderful bed-time read aloud. It's a perfect dreamy-type of book to read to children just drifting off to sleep.

Classroom Resource
Whoever You Are is an essential classroom resource which recognizes our common humanity in simple terms. Learning for Justice provides six race & ethnicity lesson plans covering a number of different learning modalities and grade levels.

Learning at Home
This is a great book to introduce lessons about geography, different languages, or cultures. Sue Larkey, Learning Media offers some wonderful suggestions and resources on how to develop these ideas into learning opportunities.

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