You and Me Together: Moms, Dads, and Kids Around the World (Barbara Kerley Photo Inspirations)

I believe this is an exciting, educational book which was successful for two main reasons. First, its real-life photography as the story's illustration brought the text to life and was the main delivery of the story. The text was used to simply highlight the photography of families from around the world and was used as captions to the full page images. The pictures told more of a story than the text could have provided and presented family life all over the world to its readers. The second reason I enjoyed this book so much was that it lets readers see diverse cultures that they may not have previously been exposed to. This book is a great resource for readers about other cultures all around the world by showing them different family's show more experiences depending on where they live. For example one of the photos presented is of a family walk, although their experience entails walking with a gigantic sack of hay on the mother's back, which is shown through the photograph. This book presents how different family's life experiences are in different parts of the world, even if the actual activities are technically the same. Families do things very differently in different cultures and parts of the world, but still have each other to share their experiences with. show less

I read this book for my multicultural text set and found it to be very enjoyable read. Each page featured a family from a different area of the world. I liked that at the end of the book, it showed a small version of the pictures on each page with a short biography about where the picture took place and what is happening in that picture. I loved this addition to the book because it showed which family traditions occur in other countries. Another reason I liked this book is that it had very simple language. It focused on one verb, such as "catching" and "making," and then wrote simple sentences with that verb to show what families around the world did with one another. I felt it was a simple yet powerful book. It was easy to read because show more the focus was more on the pictures than the words. The main message of this book is that families all look very different and have many different traditions, but they are still family. show less

I liked this book for three reasons. I thought that the illustrations were really powerful. Because they were real, you could get a real sense of family and what they were doing and feeling at the specific time. My favorite photograph was the “Dancing a turn or two.” with the little girl standing on her father’s feet. I felt that because I connected with this photo, other readers could as well. Another thing I liked about this book was the writing. Every page usually ended with “me and you” and I thought that the use of this repetition was key to this book because of the meaning that it was trying to get across. A final reason I liked this book was the last couple of pages. It was because of these pages that made me go from show more just saying this book was okay, to really liking it. These pages allowed me to see where the families in the pictures were actually from and I liked that because I would have never guessed where some of these pictures were taken. The big message of this book is that love between parents is universal. It is shown throughout the words and mostly pictures of parents and children taken around the world. show less

I liked this book for a few different reasons. The first reason is because of the illustrations. The illustrations for this book were not drawn but, instead taken. The book was composed of photography that was taken around the world of children and their parents. It included places like Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Germany, Tanzania, and many more that could broaden ones view. The second thing I liked about this book was the simple and self explanatory language. "Telling a Tale or two" or " Catching a fish" are just a few of the short sentences that young readers can pick up and relate to something they might have done with their own parent. Lastly, I liked the organization of the writing. The entire book was written with short and show more simple sentences, not giving the reader much substance however, the last two pages of the book were an article about the world's children. This was a great addition to the book, including factual information about the world and its youth. "What kinds of world permits 38,000 children to die every day from preventable poverty-related causes?" This textual feature allows older children to be more engaged with this simple book I enjoyed. Overall, I think that the 'big idea' of this book was to not only emphasize what children and parents do together, but also to inform one about the the uprising problems, and how that unconditional love can make for a better society. show less

I liked this book; it was a collection of photographs of people with their kids from all around the world. It featured all ethnicities, and many different locations.

The pictures in this book told the loose story. There wasn't much of a plot, but there were fantastic photographs of parents and children in "action shots"- always doing things and typically not even looking at the camera. The photos were of people just happily living their lives, and they were from all around the world.
This brings me to another reason I liked the book. The multitude of ethnicities featured in this book encourage the reader to consider other ethnicities as similar to their own. Furthermore, enjoying spending time with your child is one of the most human show more things someone can do, and this encourages the reader to consider all of these other cultures with a more compassionate mindset.

The message of this book is that it is wonderful to spend time with your child, and that all people, all around the world enjoy doing it. show less

I like this book for a younger age group (K-2nd grade) because of the small amount of words on each page and the bigger focus on the pictures. I think older students would not be able to stay engaged with this book because of the lower level language and vocabulary. However, there are two pages in the back of the book that describe in detail each picture as well as the setting of each picture and the culture the people in the picture are from. Therefore, this book would work for both younger and older students but I think younger students would get more out of it then the older students.
Because there are technically no "illustrations" but instead photographs done by National Geographic, the readers/viewers get to see the actual views show more rather than the illustrators point of view and of a story. This way, the readers/viewers get to have their own interpretations and see the similarities and differences between the photographs. Also, because there is a minimal amount of text on each page, Barbara Kerley has specific ways of formatting the text in order to keep the reader's attention. For example on one page the text reads "Seeing the SUN, a STORM, the world together, ME AND YOU". With the use of italics and bold face print, the reader is then drawn to those words and can analyze them based on the accompanying pictures.
I believe that the big idea/central message of this book is to expose children to the diversity in the world. Some students are able to tell the differences in skin color, language or clothing, but showing these images will allow the children to physically "see" the world and how different/unique everyone is. show less

I really liked hpw this book brought different images of families from around the world, all bunched up to fit inside a book for a young child to read. I couldn't help but remember my old "American Girl" magazines while I was reading this, where they would have paper dolls with outfits representative of their nationalities adn cultures and had little stories describing their cultures to go with it, and I think that was why I was drawn to this book. I think it goes a long way in helping children understand other religions in a way that they can associate with, their families. I also think it provides not only a visual understanding, or at least appreciation of different cultures (which the children will encounter in life) but also show more provides oppurtunities for the parent/teacher and child to discuss geopgraphy and culture and how families are families around the world. Maybe it could even inspire penpals, who knows. show less