Derrick Barnes

Illustrations and easy-to-read text pay homage to the strength, character, and worth of a child.

I Am Every Good Thing

Kim Tyo-Dickerson

I read this digital review copy via Edelweiss+ and Penguin Random House.

It seems crazy for the world to need this book so much, but it does. I am the mom of an Ethiopian-American son, and while I read this book again and again, and I remember all the black boys who have been shot for just being black, just walking down the street black, I think about my little boy who is not so little anymore at 11 going on 12, and how he is every good thing in every way to me, his father, his sister, his community, just like the boys described on these pages. I fear a world that doesn't see him as a beautiful little boy he was, like it has his whole life. Now the world will start to see him, has started to see him, as a black teenager, ready to flip the switch from boy to teen to man and look at him with new, suspicious eyes. 

While this picture book is a joyous, proud, antiracist call to love and compassion for black boys everywhere by the creative team who brought us Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, the childhood exuberance singing on the pages is tempered with grief, grief at what needs to be said to remind folks about how black boys deserve to exist in the world:
 
I am a brother,
a son,
a nephew,
a favorite cousin,
a grandson.
I am a friend.
I am real.

Author Derrick Barnes and illustrator Gordon C. James have created a clarion call to demand basic human rights for every black boy, boys who deserve to have childhoods, to get an education, to explore their worlds, to have dreams that surpass their ancestors' "wildest dreams":

I am a roaring flame of creativity.
I am a lightning round of questions, and
a star-filled sky of solutions.
I am an explorer, planting a flag on every
square foot of this planet where I belong.
I am a sponge soaking up information,
knowledge, and wisdom.
I want it all. And I am allllll ears.

Reading can be a deeply moving act of resistance. Sharing I Am Every Good Thing with young people, in classrooms, libraries, and homes, welcomes both questions, understanding and conversations surrounding race and power. For help with this, pair this book with Ibram Kendi's Antiracist Baby for children, with Ibram Kendi Jason Reynolds's Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You for real talk about why this book needs to say:

And without a shadow 
of a doubt,
I am worthy
to be loved.

I am worthy
to be loved.

Serena Timmerman

*read for class assignment*
This book is one that every child and classroom should have on their shelves. A beautiful depiction of black joy with incredible affirmations. These affirmations can be used for any individual but they are especially impactful for black children. The words and pictures work beautifully together.

I Am Every Good Thing

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