Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace is written by Mary Hoffman and illustrated by Caroline Binch.

Multicultural Picture Book

2nd - 3rd Grade

5 out of 5 

Grace's classmates say that she can not play Peter Pan in the school play because she is black and a girls. Grace finds out that she can do anything she puts her mind to.

I really enjoyed this book. I love the plot because it has a good moral, that you can do anything you set your mind to. The author also captured the amazing imagination young children have. You are able to connect with Grace through her imaginative adventures, struggles, triumphs, and excitement. The illustrations are beautiful. They are detailed and the characters are drawn with such great variety and uniqueness. I love that her classmates are illustrated as students of different ethnic and racial backgrounds. Amazing Grace addresses a couple great multicultural topics. Two multicultural topics it addresses are race and gender. These topics are both able to be overcome by Grace. They are both addressed when her classmates say that she can not play the part of Peter Pan due to these factors. I think it is great that she is able to get cast as the part of Peter Pan. This demonstrates a good lesson, that a person should not be judged because of factors like these, that they may not be able to control.

I think that Amazing Grace would be a great book to use in a classroom because it addresses multicultural topics which are important for students to understand. It is important that they learn that they can not judge people based off these ideas. Another idea that you could teach using this book is that you can do anything that you put your mind to. You could use this book to intrigue children's imaginations and creativity by creating a play or writing about imaginary play they are involved in.