Book: Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown
Author: Xochitl Dixon
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
Release date: October 1, 2024
Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown, follows a young boy on a joyously affirming adventure that celebrates all shades of brown, from the darkest to the lightest.
From new school desks to freckles and moles, from fresh pastries to cedar canoes, brown is everywhere around us. God created and used brown to color the giant California redwoods, the Grand Canyon walls, busy beavers building dams, great horned owls hoo-hooing, and his image-bearers.
Everywhere that I go
I’m searching to see
something wonderfully, marvelously
brown—just like you and like me!
Illustrated by Pura Belpré Honor Award artist Sara Palacios and written by Xochitl Dixon, Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown takes kids on a tour of the U.S. to seek and find all the brilliant and beautiful shades of brown—from ivory to ebony—that God created. Readers will be encouraged to love the skin tone God chose for them as they observe how the spectacular shades of brown are reflected in their communities and the world around them.
Click here to get your copy!
I really enjoy reading Children's books and Pictures books. I share them with the little ones in my life, including the kids at Church. Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown by Xochitl Dixon is the latest that I have shared with the Little ones at Church.
WOW, I truly am amazed how the author really takes a Picture book and writes about important things for Kids to read and understand. The storyline of this book really hit "home" for me and my young adult Boys. My 3 Boys are Bi-Racial and are truly all different shades of Brown. I really LOVE how the author points out the different colors of things around the US to show kids different hues don't mean people are different. The different hues make people and things unique and God created it all! Kids love colors and learning that colors come in all shades and tones, it a great thing for little ones to learn. The Illustrator, Sara Palacios, has done an AMAZING job and the colors throughout the book are very vivid and flow with the story. I HIGHLY recommend this book to Kids of all ages and would make a great gift for Churches and Sunday Schools. AMAZING BOOK!
Xochitl (So-Cheel) Dixon, author of Waiting for God: Trusting Him for the Answers to Your Prayers, is a regular contributor for Our Daily Bread, the bestselling God Hears Her compilations and blog, and Tyndale’s NLT Go Bible for Kids (September 2024). Equipping readers to grow closer to God while nurturing an authentic loving community, she shares biblical encouragement, celebrates ethnic diversity, and advocates for disability awareness with her beautifully diverse family and her service dog, Callie, featured in the 2021 ECPA Christian Book Award Children’s Book Finalist Different Like Me, Diferente como yo, What Color is God’s Love? and Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown.
More from Xochitl
I’m a first-generation Mexican American raised by Spanish-speaking immigrant grandparents and parents, who taught me to be invisible and believed assimilation would lead to a better life for me. The racism and colorism I experienced throughout my life caused me to grapple with my identity, self-worth, and my sense of belonging. However, I was in third grade the first time I stood against injustice. In my teen years, my passion for celebrating ethnic diversity and standing against injustice while advocating for disability awareness and inclusion grew.
Then, in 1994, I married a man who shared my passions. As a first-generation Mexican American raised by immigrant parents and grandparents, a wife to a Black man, a stepmother to a Black son, and a mother of a biracial son, my commitment to stand against racial injustice became even more personal.
I submitted my life to Christ in 2001 and began asking the Holy Spirit to make me more like Jesus. That same year, after a student used a racial slur toward our biracial son, I wrote Different Like Me.
As God empowered me to love Him and my neighbors with a healthy and holy perspective, God began to grow our beautifully diverse family. My youngest granddaughter, whose father is Black, shared that kids teased her because she doesn’t look like her sisters, who share the same white father. I assured her that the melanin God uses to color all skin is brown, from the lightest to the darkest shades. Then, I told her that I would be writing Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown.
In 2020, Our Daily Bread published Different Like Me. As I edited What Color is God’s Love? and Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown, God continued affirming that He did not create the divisive and oppressive systems that label His image-bearers as “white” or “black” and feed the ignorance of racism or colorism. Instead, He designed melanin to include every spectacular shade of brown from the darkest ebony to the lightest ivory, even in those He created with birth marks, vitiligo, and albinism.
God intentionally selected every skin tone for every person He created and loves, His image-bearers. He calls every shade of brown good, including the shade of brown He used when He created you and me. As we celebrate our God-designed ethnic diversity, we can share the Good News of Jesus Christ as we love God and all our neighbors together.
Simple Harvest Reads, October 28 (Author Interview)
Library Lady’s Kid Lit, October 29
Lots of Helpers, October 30
Guild Master, October 31 (Author Interview)
Vicky Sluiter, November 1
Leslie’s Library Escape, November 1
Texas Book-aholic, November 2
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, November 3
Fiction Book Lover, November 4 (Author Interview)
Mary Hake, November 4
Happily Managing a Household of Boys, November 5
Locks, Hooks and Books, November 6
A Reader’s Brain, November 7 (Author Interview)
Artistic Nobody, November 8
Labor Not in Vain, November 9
Life on Chickadee Lane, November 10
To celebrate her tour, Xochitl is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon card and a signed copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/00adcf5480/
Celebrate Lit Blog Tour: Wonderfully, Marvelously, Brown by Xochitl Dixon
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