The Favorite Daughter by Allen Say

★★★

A picture book for lower elementary grades.

Yuriko is a mixed-race girl (half-Caucasian, half-Japanese) who is teased because of her Japanese name and her non-Japanese-looking blond hair.

I picked up this book specifically because I am interested in books about mixed-race kids. There are not a lot of books out there, but from what I've seen, they seem to fall into two camps: either the book is a story that happens to feature a mixed-race child, or the feature story is explicitly about how the mixed-race child deals with being mixed-race. I think there is value in both kinds of books, and this one falls into the latter category.

There is quite a bit about Japanese culture, from food and fashion to art and architecture. In that regard, this book can certainly broaden some young horizons.

Most of the book is dialogue, which makes for an engaging read. It's a picture book, and just having a series of illustrations featuring a mixed-race child is so rare that it seems worthwhile in itself.

Interestingly, the first line in the book implies that Yuriko's parents are divorced. The book features Yuriko and her father, and her mother is never mentioned. Other than that first sentence, there is no further insight into her family structure. I couldn't figure out how I felt about that. Is it a good thing, that divorce is just something in the background, so matter-of-fact that it's not even worth mentioning? This book is NOT a book about being a child of divorce, so does it normalize the experience for children of divorce to see a child of divorce in a book, and the divorce itself isn't a big deal? On the other hand, why not just explicitly explain where the mother is? Even as an adult reading the book, I kept wondering, "Where's mom? Are they even going to mention her?" It was something of a mystery, which distracted from the real point of the book.

And the real point of the book was Yuriko being mixed-race. It is nothing to be ashamed of, and in fact, there is quite a lot to be proud of. The message was couched in another message about being creative and original, which was a nice touch, so that the race-related message wasn't too heavy-handed.