Chocolate Me!

Description

The boy is teased for looking different than the other kids. His skin is darker, his hair curlier. He tells his mother he wishes he could be more like everyone else. And she helps him to see how beautiful he really, truly is. For years before they both achieved acclaim in their respective professions, good friends Taye Diggs and Shane W. Evans wanted to collaborate on Chocolate Me!, a book based on experiences of feeling different and trying to fit in as kids. Now, both men are fathers and see more than ever the need for a picture book that encourages all people, especially kids, to love themselves.

Taye Diggs is an actor whose credits include motion pictures (How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Chicago), stage (Rent, Wicked), and television (Private Practice). He lives in Los Angeles and New York City with his wife, the actress Idina Menzel, and their son. Shane W. Evans is the illustrator of numerous award-winning books for children, including Black Jack: The Ballad of Jack Johnson, and Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper's Daughter, winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. He lives with his wife and daughter in Kansas City, Missouri.

"With its universal themes of wanting to fit in, self-acceptance, and self-esteem, this read-aloud offering is sure to strike a chord with many young readers/listeners, and on a variety of subjects, not just race." --School Library Journal "Taye Diggs can act and sing, and now he proves he can write. With Chocolate Me!, the affable Diggs makes an assured foray into the children's book category. Lavishly illustrated by Shane W. Evans, Chocolate embraces a difficult topic with wide arms: colorism." --Essence "Actor Diggs, making his children's book debut, gives an unvarnished take on the emotional impact of taunting that cuts to the core of one's identity... Evans makes the hero's journey to confidence irresistible, with bighearted, stylized pictures that draw on the emotionally exuberant vocabulary of street art and anime." --Publishers Weekly