Review: This Book Teaches Children To Accept Their Appearance, Love Their Features

Eyes That Kiss In The Corners, by Joanna Ho, with illustrations by Duang Ho, is a story about loving yourself and others.

This story is about a young Asian girl who notices that her eyes are different from her friends. Their eyes are rounder and different colors, but like the other women in her family, she “has eyes that kiss in the corners and glow like warm tea”.

I liked that this book for children celebrates diversity of appearance. My friends and I are at an age where we are experimenting with makeup and ways to accentuate our features in an effort to be “prettier.” We sometimes wish for rosy cheeks, slimmer noses, longer eyelashes and clearer skin without truly appreciating our natural beauty.

This book affirms that all eye shapes are beautiful, and how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The author wrote this book based on her own experiences.

“For too many years, I wanted to fit standards of beauty that did not reflect me, my family, or my culture. I didn’t realize that wishing for different eyes was also a rejection of so much more,” she writes. Affirming that all eye shapes are beautiful, especially for young children, is so significant to their self-confidence. This book appreciates the beauty of the people in the story and their love for one another, rather than focuing on appearance and how they look different than others.

I recommend this book to children who are POC. It is so wonderfully written and is a prime example of why diversity is so important in literature.

Four out of four roses!