Boys, Girls, and Babies

One of Niko’s favorite books is “Babies” by Gyo Fujikawa. If you can find an old version of this in a used book store or thrift store, pick it up. It’s delightful. Sadly, current versions remove a few pages, which is appalling since it’s a very short book to begin with. Fujikawa was dedicated to portraying a wide variety of babies and children in her books, and her illustrations are delightful. After reading the book, we’ll talk about the different babies and kids. Are they happy, or sad? What are they doing? What are they thinking? Following the advice of anti-racism educators, we look at skin color and hair color and texture and talk about how some people are different in the same way we look at clothing and activities (this baby is wearing pants, but this baby isn’t. This baby is putting on socks, and this baby is wearing a funny hat. this baby has long straight yellow hair and light skin. This baby has orange hair. This baby is wearing a kimono. This baby is crying. This baby has curly hair and dark skin.). And sometimes I ask him if a baby is a boy or a girl.

Sometimes he gets confused.

And sometimes it’s really not clear if one of Fujikawa’s babies is male or female. It’s just a fat faced baby in a diaper!

He does better with older kids, who are wearing gendered clothing and hair styles.

This one has pants and short hair. It’s a boy. This one has long hair and a dress. It’s a girl.

But this one? Wrapped up in a towel and grinning? That’s a baby.

There’s boy, there’s girl, and there’s baby.

Mirrored from Now Showing!.