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This week, for Book Week, I am featuring posts on a few #OwnVoices books that we love. For more about Own Voices books and why I think they are important, see the intro to yesterday’s post on El Deafo by Cece Bell.
There is a scene in Maxine Beneba Clarke’s incredible autobiographical book, The Hate Race, in which she recounts a little white girl at her pre-school saying accusingly to her, “you’re brown.” It was the first time Beneba Clarke, whose parents are of Afro-Caribbean descent and immigrated to Australia from the U.K., felt that she was different. But, it wasn’t the last. This moment marked the start of a childhood in the suburbs of Sydney that was shaped by racist othering and exclusion by most of her peers and even teachers (some of them well-meaning, but misguided, others in a bubble of complacent white ignorance).
Reading Beneba Clarke’s picture book, Wide Big World (illustrations by Isobel Knowles), I can’t help but think that it’s something of an imaginary do-over – a chance to see what could have happened if, in that “you’re brown” moment, little Maxine had had the know-how to respond, and if the pre-school educator had been right there with words of joyful, earnest acceptance, rather than silence.
Wide Big World, illustrated in beautiful earth tones, and featuring darling wide-eyed children, opens:
“On Tuesday at kinder, under the mulberry tree, Izzy Jones stared over at me. ‘You’re brown, Belle!’ she said, her eyes big-saucer-wide.“
Belle responds, “Yeah, I am!“. This begins a conversation at kinder about all manner of things that are naturally different. The teacher says that he is “hairy and tall.” A baby is “cute, chubby and bald.” Nature, too, makes everything unique, like the “red-hot-brilliant” sun and “the cool and clean” rain.
Together, the kids discover that nature “sprinkles her sparkle into every child.” Difference is what makes everything “wondrous-unique.” In Wide Big World, Izzy and Belle end up friends, appreciative of each other’s differences.
In my perfect world, every pre-school in Australia would have a copy of this book, and would be reading it together regularly. As Maxine Beneba Clarke discovered, children begin to notice differences from a very young age. That doesn’t have to turn negative. In fact, it can be something wonderful when we choose to celebrate, with our youngest kids on up, how much beautiful diversity there is in our wide big world.
Wide Big World is published by Hachette Australia.
Our review is self-funded.