A rhyming book in which a boy shares why he’s proud of his two-dad family, even though they don’t all look alike.
“My family looks a muddle,/But it doesn’t make me sad,” opens the story. The boy goes on to explain that he has a Daddy and a Dad who are always there to care for him, and that they all have a lot in common. There’s one thing that is different about them, though, he says—his skin is a different color than his dads’. Most days they don’t notice their differences, however, although “sometimes people get confused” because “our family looks a muddle.” His dads then tell him stories “Of my culture and my past” and listen when he has questions about why their family looks different. They show their love every day and emphasize that no matter their differences, “A family is who loves you.”
The intent of this story about an adoptive family is a sweet one. The illustrations, however, fall a little short. The black graphic outlines of boy and dads are always exactly the same on every page, though in different positions, and whatever is in the background shows through their transparent faces, as can be seen in the cover image here. In some of the images, the background colors showing through their faces are different, but in others, they are the same, which undercuts the point that their skin colors are different. Some readers, too, I fear, will not even think about the background colors as skin colors at all, but as background, and read all of the family’s skin tones as a uniform transparent shade (or non-shade), again undercutting the idea that the family is a “muddle.”
Nevertheless, the book offers a heartfelt reinforcement of familial love, no matter how a family is formed or what its members look like, and a wider message that families are each unique, though similar in the love they share.
