Masterpiece

Masterpiece written by Alexandra Hoffman and illustrated by Beatriz Mello is a beautiful book about celebrating neurodiversity and teaching empathy, acceptance, understanding and inclusion.

Samuel loves blue! Blue room, blue clothes, blue packpack, everything blue! One day, Samuel is given an assignment by his teacher to draw his family playing outside. His teacher says, “Lots of colour!” In Samuel’s mind, lots of color can be mean all shades of blue, since this his favorite color. When his teacher asked him to present the drawing to the class, she used this as an oppportunity to celebrate Samuel’s use of various shades of blue instead of correcting him. This helps celebrate his neurodiversity, which is an important lesson for all children.

I love how the author integrates other different neurodiverse characteristics such as flapping, wearing headphones and lack of eye contact in an accepting way. This is an important part of this book.

This picture book reminds me of one of my wonderful students that loved green. He only wore green, drew with only green crayons and markers and felt safe with this color. In a similar way, we celebrated his love for the color and used it as a language opportunity (“I love green” ,”Green is the best”, “My favorite color is green”, etc.).

To learn more about the author, Alexandra Hoffman, visit her website here.

To watch a read aloud of this book, check out the video below.

Masterpiece

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