Me and My Family Tree

June 15, 2018
A reillustrated version of Sweeney's text (first published in 1999) about a three-generation family tree.Readers looking for a book that presents broad information about genealogy or family history will be disappointed with this title, which depicts a little girl making a family tree that includes her brother, parents, two sets of grandparents, and aunts, uncles, and cousins. It doesn't progress further back into more distant generations and includes only living family members. In the earlier version, the protagonist appeared white, but here she seems to be biracial, with a man of color as her father and a light-skinned woman as her mother in the illustrations. The older version had a white aunt and uncle on both sides of the family each married to a person of color, with biracial children, but here the protagonist's family is the only one that appears to be interracial. Closing text asserts that "everyone in the world has a family tree" and shows pictures of diverse families set against a map of the world, including some that could be read as families led by two moms or two dads as well as a single parent and a grandparent. This nod to diversity of family composition is welcome, but it seems like an afterthought rather than an integral part of the book, and it does not address adoption or other more-complex family constellations. Three of Sweeney's other titles have been similarly reillustrated and slightly updated: Me and My Amazing Body (illustrated by Edward Miller); Me and My Place in Space (illustrated by Christine Gore); and Me on the Map (illustrated by Qin Leng).A slight introduction to a big topic. (Picture book. 3-5)

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