ALA Booklist (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 2002)

With the recent death of beloved children's author Virginia Hamilton, this newly illustrated version of her husband's 1973 poem is especially moving with its lyrical celebration of an interracial family like their own. Children everywhere will love the simple, joyful rhythmic words in Adoff's signature shaped speech style, with McCully's beautiful dancing watercolors that show the contemporary family (computers in the home), loving and happy together through the seasons. Mom is brown skinned; Dad is blond; the two young children are the colors of both their parents. The light-filled scenes are idyllic, even when a parent gets red in the face (I puff and yell you into bed). They read and sing together, work in the garden, play on the beach, and tell stories with granny white and grandma black. Adults will be interested in the biographical note: Adoff and McCully's 1973 version was the first children's book about an interracial family. In 1960, when Adoff and Hamilton were married, their interracial union violated segregation laws in 28 states. Adoff says this is an enduring song to their two now adult children.

Kirkus Reviews

The author and illustrator of this groundbreaking 1973 portrait of an interracial family (Adoff and his wife, the late Virginia Hamilton, were the models) reunite for this updated overhaul. "Black is brown is tan / is girl is boy / is nose is / face / is all / the / colors / of the race . . ." Two children reflect on brown and white as they cover a daily domestic round, from jumping into the parental bed in the morning to "singing songs / in / singing night" on a moonlit porch, conveying in each verse a consciousness of color, but a far stronger sense of family closeness. The illustrations follow suit, showing the children with parents, grandparents, and relatives, working, playing, being together. And just as Adoff has reshaped the lines without changing the words, so McCully has plainly worked from her originals in placing and posing her figures, though the pictures are redone in a larger size, the family lives in a different house with modern details, and the father is now blond. As the number of interracial families goes up but their representation in picture books remains vanishingly slight, this fresh rendition still makes a cogent statement. (Picture book/poetry. 4-7)

School Library Journal (Mon Jul 01 00:00:00 CDT 2002)

Gr 1-3 A beautiful picture of an interracial home in which there is fun, security, and plenty of love. The text was first published in 1973 and remains the same. Members from both sides of the extended family come for visits. One of the lovely scenes shows "granny white" and "grandma black" arriving at the same time and then sitting congenially with the children "telling stories of ago." McCully has updated the illustrations with watercolor paintings to show the brown-skinned momma, the white daddy, and the two children in a 21st-century setting. For example, the earlier edition showed the father and son sitting in front of a typewriter, while in the updated version they are sitting in the same position, but the typewriter has been replaced by a computer. Children from interracial families will love reading about a family like their own and other youngsters will be provided with a window into such a home. Dorothy N. Bowen, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond

Horn Book (Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2002)

McCully has completely redesigned and re-illustrated this new edition, and it both gains and loses in the process. The size of the book has almost doubled, so that the intimate feeling of the text is less apparent, but the full-color paintings of an interracial family going about its daily business are warm and joyful.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Fragmented verse lovingly explores the colors of various multicultural families. Ages 4-8. (Jan.)