Guide to categories: Kid Review – review of books for elementary-aged and younger children

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About the Book

Book: Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown

Author: Xochitl Dixon

Genre: Children’s Picture Book

Release date: October 1, 2024

Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown, follows a young boy on a joyously affirming adventure that celebrates all shades of brown, from the darkest to the lightest.

From new school desks to freckles and moles, from fresh pastries to cedar canoes, brown is everywhere around us. God created and used brown to color the giant California redwoods, the Grand Canyon walls, busy beavers building dams, great horned owls hoo-hooing, and his image-bearers.

Everywhere that I go
I’m searching to see
something wonderfully, marvelously
brown—just like you and like me!

Illustrated by Pura Belpré Honor Award artist Sara Palacios and written by Xochitl Dixon, Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown takes kids on a tour of the U.S. to seek and find all the brilliant and beautiful shades of brown—from ivory to ebony—that God created. Readers will be encouraged to love the skin tone God chose for them as they observe how the spectacular shades of brown are reflected in their communities and the world around them.

Click here to get your copy!

My Kid Review

Dixon, Xochitl. Wonderfully, Marvelously, Brown. Illustrated by Sara Palacios. New York: Waterbrook, 2024.

This may sound strange but Wonderfully, Marvelously, Brown reminds me of skin tone crayons. In the text Dixon explores the many shades of brown and all the different things that share those shades. The underlying message in the story is I’m looking for things that are brown like me, no matter what my tone of brown is. Dixon’s books always seem to fill a need in the picture book market. I always look forward to her new books. 

I appreciated that Palacios uses a wide variety of skin tones in her illustrations. She also has people of various disabilities represented. Most children will be able to find a character in the illustrations who looks like them.

Wonderfully, Marvelously, Brown could easily find a place in any K-12 school library. It is appropriate for preschool and early elementary-aged children. 

I received a complimentary copy of Wonderfully, Marvelously, Brown. This is my honest review.

About the Author – Xochitl Dixon

Xochitl (So-Cheel) Dixon, author of Waiting for God: Trusting Him for the Answers to Your Prayers, is a regular contributor for Our Daily Bread, the bestselling God Hears Her compilations and blog, and Tyndale’s NLT Go Bible for Kids (September 2024). Equipping readers to grow closer to God while nurturing an authentic loving community, she shares biblical encouragement, celebrates ethnic diversity, and advocates for disability awareness with her beautifully diverse family and her service dog, Callie, featured in the 2021 ECPA Christian Book Award Children’s Book Finalist Different Like Me, Diferente como yo, What Color is God’s Love? and Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown.

More from Xochitl Dixon

I’m a first-generation Mexican American raised by Spanish-speaking immigrant grandparents and parents, who taught me to be invisible and believed assimilation would lead to a better life for me. The racism and colorism I experienced throughout my life caused me to grapple with my identity, self-worth, and my sense of belonging. However, I was in third grade the first time I stood against injustice. In my teen years, my passion for celebrating ethnic diversity and standing against injustice while advocating for disability awareness and inclusion grew.

Then, in 1994, I married a man who shared my passions. As a first-generation Mexican American raised by immigrant parents and grandparents, a wife to a Black man, a stepmother to a Black son, and a mother of a biracial son, my commitment to stand against racial injustice became even more personal.

I submitted my life to Christ in 2001 and began asking the Holy Spirit to make me more like Jesus. That same year, after a student used a racial slur toward our biracial son, I wrote Different Like Me.

As God empowered me to love Him and my neighbors with a healthy and holy perspective, God began to grow our beautifully diverse family. My youngest granddaughter, whose father is Black, shared that kids teased her because she doesn’t look like her sisters, who share the same white father. I assured her that the melanin God uses to color all skin is brown, from the lightest to the darkest shades. Then, I told her that I would be writing Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown.

In 2020, Our Daily Bread published Different Like Me. As I edited What Color is God’s Love? and Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown, God continued affirming that He did not create the divisive and oppressive systems that label His image-bearers as “white” or “black” and feed the ignorance of racism or colorism. Instead, He designed melanin to include every spectacular shade of brown from the darkest ebony to the lightest ivory, even in those He created with birth marks, vitiligo, and albinism.

God intentionally selected every skin tone for every person He created and loves, His image-bearers. He calls every shade of brown good, including the shade of brown He used when He created you and me. As we celebrate our God-designed ethnic diversity, we can share the Good News of Jesus Christ as we love God and all our neighbors together.

Blog Stops

Simple Harvest Reads, October 28 (Author Interview)

Library Lady’s Kid Lit, October 29

Lots of Helpers, October 30

Guild Master, October 31 (Author Interview)

Vicky Sluiter, November 1

Leslie’s Library Escape, November 1

Texas Book-aholic, November 2

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, November 3

Fiction Book Lover, November 4 (Author Interview)

Mary Hake, November 4

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, November 5

Locks, Hooks and Books, November 6

A Reader’s Brain, November 7 (Author Interview)

Artistic Nobody, November 8

Labor Not in Vain, November 9

Life on Chickadee Lane, November 10

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Xochitl is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon card and a signed copy of the book!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/00adcf5480/

Read more Kid Review posts

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