Who Am I?

Turner, J. (2017). Who Am I?. New York: Aladdin.

40 Pages, Grades Preschool-3, Fiction Picture Book, ISBN 978-4814-5304-2

The main character in this cute picture book is a rabbit, who always wants to pretend to be other animals. At first, the rabbit pretended to be a frog by putting a "frog facial makeup" on his face, but there was a voice reminding him that he was not a frog but a rabbit. However, he did not give up trying to pretend other animals. He then tried to be a rooster, a tiger, a mouse, an owl, a sheep, a monkey, and some other animals. Whoever he pretended to be, there was always a voice telling him he was a rabbit. He ended up accepting the reality of being a rabbit, and he started to wonder who "the voice" is. The book has a quite surprising and interesting ending, which is "the voice" pretends to be a dog as he is actually a bat.

The author of this book also illustrated this book. Overall, I think this is good children book that can be used as a teaching source in social studies class as teaching self-identity. Here are several good aspects of this book. First, the illustration of this book is very colorful, simple, and unique. The rabbit is always in the color of black throughout the whole book, which implies he could not recognize his self-identity. Next, I think the content of this book can be easily understood by even kids in preschool or kindergartener. Moreover, its creative ending can be a good teaching point for you to teach and guide students to think deeper about the concept behind the content. If you are teaching an integrating unit that integrates Language Arts, this book is also a good example of using talk bubble or speech bubble.