Be You!
by Peter H. Reynolds
Be true. Be different. Be you. That's the whole book.
For you if
your child needs to hear, before anyone else gets to them with other ideas, that being themselves is not just okay but the whole point
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Reynolds, who also wrote The Dot and Ish, makes a single argument across a few dozen pages: be true. Be a light. Be different. Be kind. Be open. Be brave. Be you. There is no plot to navigate and no lesson disguised as a story — the book simply tells a child, directly and without qualification, that who they already are is enough, and that the things that make them different are the things worth keeping. For the youngest readers, this permission is itself a small act of resistance — every institution a child will encounter for the next eighteen years will have opinions about how they should sit, speak, dress, and think, and Be You! gets there first. The foundational stone of the Be Yourself bundle: everything else in it — Simon's right to his own timeline, the family built in Cerulean Sea, the world that makes room in Red White & Royal Blue — is what becomes possible later if this permission is planted early and never fully revoked.
Where This Book Lives
Part of a Reading Journey
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Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
For the grown-up bookshelf
Same idea, written for a grown-up. Good for the adult in the room, too.
