The Power of Acceptance and Belonging---Little Sweet Potato by Amy Beth Bloom

     Everyone, most especially young children, want to experience the feeling that they are accepted; that they feel like they are connected to someone or someplace.  There are so many ways that we as parents/educators can teach our young to learn that everyone is different, beautiful and special in their own unique way.  A simple walk outside to the park; watching a television show together or through sharing and reading stories together, like author Amy Beth Bloom's latest tale, Little Sweet Potato, can gently encourage young children to learn not to reject one another based on someones outside appearances, but rather to look to what's inside each of us because that is what truly makes us all unique.

      As our tale begins, one day, Little Sweet Potato rolls out of his comfortable, lush green patch, and is forced to find a new home.  He rolls from patch to patch, encounters some pretty mean flowers and vegetables, but he cannot find a new patch to call home.  Just when Little Sweet Potato thinks all is lost after a rainstorm, he comes across Hodge Podge Patch, where all different types of vegetables, flowers and fruits all live happily together.  Finally, Little Sweet Potato has a new patch where he belongs.
     Almost immediately, Amy Beth Bloom's lighthearted storyline was very reminiscent to the popular 1960 classic by P.D Eastman, Are You My Mother, with an underlying moral lesson similar to those given by the lovable characters from Veggie Tales.  With delightful illustrations by Noah Z. Jones, this picture book about acceptance is a lovely way to introduce the fact to children that, just like Little Sweet Potato, they too, will come across moments of animosity in their life; times where there is seemingly no reason for it to occur.  Bloom gently reminds her little readers that they will be able to find their very own patch that will be welcoming and provide them with a sense of peace and security in a world filled with uncertainty.

Little Sweet Potato
Written by Amy Beth Bloom & Illustrated by Noah Z. Jones
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Website:www.harpercollins.com
Retails for $16.99 (Hardcover)
Accelerated Reader Book Level:  3.3
For ages 4 thru 8