All Kinds of Bodies

“Notes for teachers, parents, and caregivers”, a closing section in All Kinds of Bodies, explains the book’s purpose:

This book is designed to help children feel good about their own bodies and value the wonderful diversity of people they encounter in the world around them. Children take their first cues about themselves and their peers from their parents or primary caregivers. If you are reading this book with a child in your care, encourage them to point out what they see in the pictures. Give them permission to be curious, to observe similarities and differences....

All Kinds of Bodies is one of four books in the “All Kinds of People” series originally published in 2019 by Franklin Watts in England. Unlike most Crabtree books, the books in this series do not use full-colour photos. Instead, the books contain cartoon-like art that has been rendered by Ayesha Rubio & Jenny Palmer (with the exception of All Kinds of Feelings which credits only Ayesha Rubio). The artwork portraying the children and adults is remarkably inclusive and captures the spectrum of body differences while strongly supporting the text.

The books in the series employ a form of dual text wherein the main text is delivered via third person while speech balloons containing bolded text are used to provide first person “child” examples of the points being made by the main text. For example, when the main text talks about how the body indicates its needs, the text reads:

Our bodies let us know what we need, in all kinds of ways.

Four children then each provide a specific example of the body’s communication, with a banana-holding boy saying, “When I’m hungry, my tummy rumbles” while a beach-going girl observes, “When I’m hot, my body starts to sweat and I feel thirsty.” A toque and scarf-wearing girl has the opposite problem of the girl at the beach. “When I’m cold, my teeth chatter and my skin feels shivery.” And the three previously mentioned children could all likely agree with the girl who observes, “When I’m tired, I yawn and fall asleep.”

Although All Kinds of Bodies has a Table of Contents with the chapters having titles, such as “Hair” and “Every body is special”, these titles are not repeated within the book. A few words within the two texts are highlighted, and these words are defined in “Useful Words” which shares the last page with an index. “Notes for teachers, parents, and caregivers”, which appears on the volume’s penultimate pair of pages, offers adults five suggestions around talking with children about their bodies, with one being that adults teach children that “their body belongs to them and nobody else.” This section also contains a proposed group activity which will help “children learn about and appreciate the ways we are all different and the same.”

All Kinds of Bodies definitely has classroom applications, and could be used as a discussion starter on the topic of bullying.