K-Gr 4-As they did in Happy to Be Nappy (1999) and Be Boy Buzz (2002, both Hyperion), hooks and Raschka have created a verbal and visual celebration. This time the subject is skin, both what it is and, more importantly, what it is not. "The skin I'm in/is just a covering./If you want to know who I am/you have got to come inside/and open your heart way wide." While the message comes across loud and clear, the author's deft handling of language renders it gently persuasive rather than didactic. Raschka's impressionistic pictures amplify the theme as they shift from large, bold cartoons showing the outside of both white and black children, and then move to the inner patchwork of thoughts and feelings that make up "real" individuals. The illustrations will invite lengthy study, as Raschka shows the children passing through the various boxes as they reach inside to know each other and then come outside to see skin again with fresh eyes. Whether shared with a group or one-on-one, this is an excellent vehicle to initiate discussion on a sensitive and perennially important subject.-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

The poet and the artist who created Happy to be Nappy! (1999) and Be Boy Buzz (2002) take on another big identity issue with exuberant, playful imagery that will open discussion. The simple words spell out the overt message (If you want to know who I am / you have got to come / inside), and the pictures move from big, full-page portraits of kids with various skin colors to patchwork-style pages showing all the shifting bits and pieces inside each individual. Raschka's images, in many colors and shapes, shows everything from active children; winging birds; and a smiling snake to arms reaching out and dancing feet. The art vividly celebrates history and the realism, fun, and fantasy inside each one of us--the dreams of all the way I imagine me. This is about skin color, but it's also about diversity within a group and within one child, and about finding the story inside the stereotype.

Hooks and Raschka's collaboration encourages readers to look beyond appearances. Raschka's illustrations are well matched with hooks's flowing refrains, showing children of varied ethnicities in broad strokes that get smaller as hooks invites readers to "be with me inside the me of me." A poetic picture book that will be relevant to a diverse range of children.

Snake(skin) and onion(skin) form the illustrative leitmotifs in this over-intellectualized musing on skin color. "The skin I'm in / is just a covering. If you want to know who I am / you have got to come inside / and open your heart way wide." Raschka does his usual extraordinary job of illustrating highly abstract concepts: children of different colors—rendered in smudgy paints—look at, point at, and reach out to each other, finally clasping hands in a sort of graphic minuet. Colored boxes alternately become clothing, frames, and X-ray film that reveals the children's inner dreams; they multiply until they form a quilt, the loosely fit-together patches alternating faces and simple, striking designs. hooks's preachily earnest text, on the other hand, while admirably articulating a vision that states that "skin . . . is one small way to see me / but not real enough to be all / the me of me or the you of you," is so removed from real children's concrete understanding as to be almost meaningless. Skip this, and buy another copy of Yo? Yes! (Picture book. 4-7)

Raschka and hooks, who teamed up for <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Be Boy Buzz, weigh superficial appearance against deep knowing in this warm but insubstantial meditation on skin. "The skin I'm in/ is just a covering./ It cannot tell my story," say the characters. A peachy pink hand and a chocolate brown hand reach from opposite directions across the width of a spread, and grab hold of one another: "If you want to know who I am/ you have got to come inside/ and open your heart way wide." In Raschka's exuberant paintings, an unpeeled-onion motif implies the multiplicity of stories beneath a person's visible surface, and dancing children, with varied hues of skin and reckless swirls of hair, suggest common interests and love. With torn paper rectangles, Raschka establishes quilty grids on the pages, and limns his characters in wide brushstrokes within these boxy spaces. Jazzy dashes and daubs of earth-tone paint suggest African batik or Aboriginal art. Yet the multiracial characters do not merge as hooks's poem suggests. Although they gaze wide-eyed at readers and each other, most remain boxed-in, without crossing boundaries. hooks urges everyone to get "together on the inside," but without elaboration, her sentiment becomes abstract; a vague conclusion incites people to be "All real then in that place where/ skin again is one small way to see me/ but not real enough/ to be all/ the me of me or the you of you." Like the book's title, such statements sound hopeful but remain obscure. Ages 4-7. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Sept.)