Mandy Strobridge
HD 25 Book Analysis
(Powers, 2003)
1. Find an image online or take a photo of the front cover and any relevant pages of your book.
2. Tell us the title of the book, author, illustrator, year of original publication.
A Beautiful Girl By Nikki Rogers copyright 2003
3. Give a brief description of the book. This childrens book is a short tale of many different shapes and sizes that girls can come in and how they all are beautiful in different way. They describe many differen characteristic that little girls differ in such as hair color, height, skin color, and facial features. “everyone is beautiful, a valuable treasure” is the ending line in the childs story and very much sums up the entire book.
4. Print up the two tools to refer to as you write your analysis: “10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children’s Books for Racism and Sexism” and “Evaluating Children’s Literature.” Use these handouts to write a thoughtful and thorough evaluation.
For the most part “A Beautiful Girl” is a pretty politically correct children’s book. The characters are all drawn in the same format, the girls with colored skin are all equally drawn with the same proportions and nothing is depicting them to be inferior within the illustrations of the book. However throughout the twelve page book there are ten different girls and only two of the girls have skin colors other than white, those skin colors are referred to as “chocolate” and “dessert sands.” The fact that there are only two young girls that are not white is directing the youth to believe that there are more types of beautiful white girls than other ethnicities. Also there was no Asian, Indians, or black young girls. The two young girls of color that were used as examples were; the young girl who had “dessert sands” colored skins, she was portrayed as a young Mexican girl, and the chocolate colored young girl who was portrayed to be an Indian girl. Both of these ideas of skin color seemed racist to me. The young girl who was more Mexican decent with the sandy color skin was in overalls and kneeling in a sunflower patch. Maybe this was a relation to a farm like atmosphere, and also the term “sandy” is that related to dessert like scenarios in Mexico? The chocolate colored young girl was very blatantly portrayed as an Indian because she was dressed like a tribal Indian girl would be. This seems to be a very common stereotype for the darker brown skin color, and even shows itself in this book. The story line was also pretty stereotypical, although I didn’t think it crossed too many boundaries significantly, it didn’t try to stay away from them earlier. The young girl with freckles and red hair was shy and softly spoken, the blonde girl was said to be loud and bouncy, the Mexican girl worked with her hands, and the Indian girl empowers others to soar like birds. None of these descriptions were negative in any matter and they made each little girl out to be the most beautiful that they could be, but they followed the pathway of norms in our society. The book did do a great job of giving many different types of young girls that they have an equally great description of beauty. I think that many young girls would have a positive outcome when reading this book. However when you deeply disect the imaging and wording of the pages there can be a racist take on the over entity of the story.
- Are characters "outside the mainstream culture" depicted as individuals or as caricatures?
The characters are all depicted as individuals and not caractures.
- Does their representation include significant specific cultural information? Or does it follow stereotypes?
It doesn’t give specific cultural information, its mostly about the diffreences that individuals can have physically and personality wise. However I do think that it is very stereotypical as far as the different illustrations and choice of description goes. The blonde fair colored skin girl was said to be loud and bouncy, while the red headed freckled girl was shy and withheld. They were just very stereotypical and shallow ideals of what each girl should be like. So although they were saying every girl is beautiful no matter what, the descriptions were still the age old pictures we see.
- What do this narrative and these pictures say about race? Class? Culture? Gender? Age? Resistance to the status quo? The images are all drawn up ewually none are illustrated to suggested lower class, or villain like words. Some of the outfits are a bit stereotypical, such as the young Mexican girl who is in overalls and kneeled ina sunflower field. Nothing comes across to crazy and all the images are done with a good heart. They fall victum to the stereotypes of society though, and if you read slightly into the images and desriptions at all that is very obvious.
- Analyze the illustrations for stereotypes. What are people doing that may create or perpetuate a stereotype?
Young blonde girl with blonde pigtails, a skirt tank top and stocking. This young girl is said to be loud and bouncy, Blondes in our society are suppose to “ have more fun” be sort of crazy like, and very bubbly and giggly girls. (Powers, 2003)
The Mexican girl wearing overalls and kneeling in a sunflower field. She was said to have sandy dessert color skin, to me all of this is relating her to the Mexican culture. Working in fields, with labor like apparel and in dessert conditions is a stereotype of the mecian culture.
The Red Headed girl with freakles and wings on her back is stereotypical. Red headed girls usually are portrayed as shy and quiet girls, and that’s exactly what the book said about her.
The “chocolate” colored indian girl, she was wearing tribal clothes and releasing a bird from her hands. Indians have had the age old image attached to them for many years, wearing the moccasin and apache clothing and using birds as a symbol in their culture.
- Would you recommend this book? Why or why not? I actually would recommend this book. As much as it can be picked apart and called racist I truly think sometimes little girls don’t always pick up on it completely. The overall idea that all girls are equally beautiful is the best part of the book and I think many little girls need to hear that at young ages. They slowly start picking themselves apart and forget that we are all individual pieces of art work. It’s a good book with a great moral value.
