All Kinds of Beliefs

All Kinds of Beliefs 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, they 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 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 of All Kinds of Beliefs talks about “holy’ books, the wording reads:

Many religions have special books that are holy to them.

Muslims believe the Qur’an is the word of Allah. They treat this book with great respect.

The Christian holy book is the Bible. Part of it tells the story of Jesus’s life.

Hindus have many different holy books. The Ramayana tells stories about the god, Rama, and his wife, Sita.

In one of the illustrations accompanying this text, a Muslim boy’s speech bubble says, “We are learning to read the Qur’an.” Two smaller illustrations show a boy holding a Bible and saying, “At Christmas, we listen to the story of Jesus’s birth” while a Hindu child, about to go to bed, shares, “My mom reads me a story about Rama and Sita at bedtime.”

Though All Kinds of Beliefs has a Table of Contents with the chapters having titles, such as “Special Food” and “Places of Worship”, 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. Whereas the other three books in the “All Kinds of People” series used the closing “Notes for teachers, parents, and caregivers” to provide readers with an explanation of the books’ purposes, these pages in All Kinds of Beliefs simply provide the URLs for two adult-focused websites and one-paragraph overviews of six of the world’s major faiths which are presented alphabetically: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.

All Kinds of Beliefs brief text offers a once-over-lightly introduction to the concept of faith and how that concept finds expression within six of the world’s major religions. The book’s inclusive contents certainly reflect the diversity in beliefs that are represented in today’s Canadian classrooms.