Chocolate Me!

Description: Relates the experiences of a dark-skinned, curly-haired child who wishes he could look more like the lighter-skinned children in his community until his mother helps him realize how wonderful he is inside and out.

Brief description: Shane W. Evans has created pictures for over 50 books for children, including Why?, Mixed Me!, and My Friend! He has worked with authors including Shaquille O'Neal, Andrea Davis Pinkney, and Holly Robinson Peete. His awards and honors include Jane Addams Honor Book awards for Lillian's Right to Vote and We March; and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom, all of which he wrote and illustrated. Shane also received an NAACP Image Award for his collaborative work with the Peete family on My Brother Charlie. Follow him at: shaneevans.com & dreamstudio777.com

Review Quotes:

"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