A truly lovely book celebrating the beauty of diversity! Love it! ( )

This is a fun book illustrating a simple concept: everyone is lovely. What makes it noteworthy is the breadth of diversity in its mostly charming illustrations. You've got a punk rock grandma, very hairy legs paired with sparkly high heels, a person in a dress with a goatee, eyebrows that spell out the word "lovely," and braces that spell out "lovely." The illustrations have some nice surprises like a girl with yellow hair, one blue eye, and one brown eye. There are a few opposite pairings -- e.g. there's a white person dressed in all black for "black" and a black person with white hair for "white." It includes a woman in a wheelchair and someone with a metal prosthetic leg. I especially like the grandpa-ish character on the cover with earrings and a pink heart on his t-shirt. And there's even a hand with vitiligo! I have vitiligo!

Illustrative quote: "Lovely is different, weird, and wonderful."

I'm inclined to be generous in my review of this book because the message is worthy and the book is so darn cheerful. If I wanted to be critical I'd say the text is kind of blah and there are already quite a lot of books like this (I'm a big fan of [a:Todd Parr|69987|Todd Parr|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1209058265p2/69987.jpg]). I didn't really like the eyebrows spelling out "lovely" because it's sort of confusing (the implication is a unibrow is lovely, but it's very strange to have the unibrow spell out the word -- it's unrealistic in a book that's boosting the appreciation of real people). ( )

Description: This beautifully illustrated book celebrates diversity, encouraging children to embrace their unique qualities and appreciate others.
Age Group: 4-8 years

Written and illustrated by Jess Hong, the book Lovely endeavors to show that all of us, in all our colors, shapes, hair styles, braces, sexuality, sizes is lovely. Written mostly using opposites like black/white, tall/short, simple/ complex that book tries to answer the question it posits at the very begiinning: "What is Lovely?" The book answers that question at the end: Lovely is different, weird, and Wonderful. Lovely is you, Lovely is me. We are all Lovely." The book has a very diverse representation of people of all colors and sizes, disabled characters, young and old. There are gay characters represented, as well as transgender. Women are shown in all types of jobs, such as doctors, construction workers, and athletes, and professors. A really sweet, dare I say, Lovely book, that is worthy of all collections.

Lovely shows how everyone is lovely in some way, no matter what color, tattoo, or ability you have. I really like Hong's pairing of such a diverse set of people, and the use of opposites to illustrate her message is perfect. ( )