Book Title: One Word from Sophia
Author: Jim Averbeck
Illustrator:
Published: June 16, 2015
Found book from: http://weneeddiversebooks.org/
Summary: For Sophia’s birthday, all she really wants is to get a giraffe. Sophia works extremely hard in order to try to convince her parents and grandparents to buy her this giraffe, and she does not give up. The author wants children to see that trying hard and being persistent is important, and that eventually hard work will pay off. No matter what the problem or obstacle is, Sophia is able to overcome those problems. In the end, after overcoming many obstacles, Sophia gets the pet giraffe that she wanted for her birthday.
The book itself is considered a diverse book because the characters in the book are people who are of color. Sophia and her family are apart of an minority group.
Review: I think overall this is a really great book to be used in classrooms. By having the main character and her family be people of color, it will show younger children, especially girls, that there are people that come from the same background in books. If a little girl of color is used to only seeing white males in all the books she has to read, she is never going to feel welcomed or be able to fully identify with any of the characters. By having characters be people from different backgrounds, it is showing children that they are “normal” and that they are equally as important as everyone else. Going back to the word “normal”, I do believe that there is a problem with what people consider normal, and this problem is following children with the books they read. Sophia wanted a pet giraffe for her birthday, a pet that isn’t normal to ask for. What I liked about her character is that she did not care that what she wanted was unlike what most children wanted, she wanted a giraffe so she did whatever she needed to in order to get one. I would recommend this book to others because I think it does an amazing job at showing little girls that they can be powerful and that if there is something that they want, and they try their hardest to achieve it, anything is possible. To me, this is an important thing to be teaching younger girls. 
