Family and Me by Michaela Dias-Hayes

We loved Colour and me and we’re so excited to read this book!
We absolutely love this book, great for prompting bookish play- which we love.
Matthew decided he wanted to have a go at a self portrait, using his kitpas crayons. We talked about all his different features and personality and where he gets it from. Matthew said “I definitely have your eyes mam, you have brown eyes and so do I.” “I get my glasses from my daddy, he has glasses too, and nanny and dadad. Actually all my grandparents have glasses” he goes on to realise.

This book is beautifully illustrated and draws you in on every page. It’s lovely to talk about family trees and how things get passed down through the family. From little things like how you dress, to your hair colour.
This book definitely opens up lots of discussions to chat about family history.

Family and me is a lovely book beautifully illustrated all about our family trees and what it is that makes us who we are. I read it aloud with my 5 and 8 year old and it really did prompt a lot of questions and discussions about our family and what bits of them they could gave inherited from other family members. It made us talk about family members they hadn't been able to meet who had left this world too soon which was really nice and I even pulled out some old photos so they could try to spot resemblances.

I was delighted to receive a copy of this book from BabiPur to participate in book club!

This is a beautiful celebration of family and the wonder of genetics.

The book's endpapers are absolutely beautiful, featuring the family wall full of photographs of all the members of the family - especially the young heroine. The story explores all the features and traits a young girl has in common with various members of her family, including parents, grandparents and uncles and aunties. It celebrates lots of things about all those individuals, the way that these have been passed on to the heroine with love, and the special connection they share through them.

The illustrations are incredibly rich and colourful, with beautifully detailed characters. I loved the amount of emotion shown on the character's faces and the joy expressed in these illustrations. The backgrounds are all very atmospheric and each page has lots of little extras to spot and chat about with your little ones - we loved seeing all the shapes on different pages (stars, dots, rainbows, hearts), looking at the colourful prints, and spotting the animals (there's a bird, cat, and dog).

The writing has lovely rhythm and flow in most places, although some line breaks are a little awkward when read aloud. I noticed that both of my children were engaged while I was reading - my ten month old's attention was caught by the rhythm and beat of the words, while my 3.5 year old enjoyed the story and was interested in thinking about how the character's features were similar to those of her family.

As a white family we try to make sure we read books with diverse racial representation, and this book includes lovely explicit references to the cultural experience of a black family, including celebrating how she shares her 'grandad's glowing skin. [she's] proud to share his melanin!'. This is a great jumping off point for our own family conversations about different skin tones and how beautiful they all are. It does focus entirely on genetic/ biological family and features a child with a mum and a dad, so won't be representative for families with nonbiological or same sex family arrangements.

For me as a parent, something that amazes me on a regular basis is how my children can resemble different family members so much while remaining so entirely themselves. This book explores that concept with warmth, joy and colour, and it was a pleasure to share with my little ones. I suspect we'll be reading it a lot - since we read it the first time both children have requested it again, Mr 3.5 by asking for 'his special book' and Mr10 months by picking it up and bringing it to me!

Thank you BabiPur for sharing this lovely book with us.

This is a really lovely rhyming story that my children loved snuggling up and listening too. It flows beautifully and the wording is just stunning. I particularly liked "grandma's ears, always listening through the years", whilst sitting on a rocking chair beside a radio and hugging her granddaughter. Those words had a really lovely dual meaning. This book is a very 'nuclear family' type book though, but as my children have both mum, dad and family they loved discussing which physical features, interests or personality traits they share with their family members. They did really love the story and the beautiful illustrations. I found it a tad hard to read myself though, as I don't have a nuclear family set up. It's not particularly inclusive in terms of non biological parents, Lgbt family, estranged from parents etc but I guess not all books can cover everything. It is very genetics based, half is from mum, half is from dad. Whilst this is perfect for my little ones, I'd bear that in mind when choosing this book for children who perhaps don't have that kind of family set up.

We loved this beautiful rhyming story. This is how we approach history at my sons level. Learning about his family tree. The story has beautiful rich text and gorgeous illustrations. My son really enjoyed reading this, then questioning where he got some of his traits from.