Challenged Book (Caldecott Honor) (Cultural Diversity)

Crow Boy
Author and Illustrator: Taro Yashima
Penguin Books, 1955
Challenged Book, Primary Picture Book
Grades K-3

Chibi is an outcast at school. He doesn't have any friends and he is afraid of the teacher. He gets teased every day because he is such an outcast. When a new teacher, Mr. Isobe, arrives at school he notices that Chibi has special talents. Chibi knows a lot about the class garden and he is quite talented in drawing. Mr. Isobe enters Chibi into a talent show because he is able to imitate "voices of crows". Everyone begins to realize the distance chibi walks to get to and from school. Chibi becomes admired because of his dedication to school and he actually gets the only award for perfect attendance.

The only reason I can imagine this is a challenged book is for the drawings (which is ironic because the book received a Caldecott Honor). When I first picked out the book, it looked as if the main character had animal-like features. At first I thought that the boy on the cover was called "Crow Boy" because he actually looked like a crow. As I continued to read, all of the children in the book looked like they had animal-like features (a lot seemed to have monkey or ape like features). As people read this book, they could see the pictures as racist against the Japanese.