Read about the release of Colin Kaepernick’s debut children’s book, which is based on his own life and experiences and teaches kids it’s normal to be different.
“What I realized in drawing my family was that in my entire class, I was the only one who didn’t look like the rest of my family," Kaepernick
. “It’s the first documented instance that I have in my life of definitively identifying as brown…and laying the foundation for my identity as Black.”, a young boy named Colin thinks it’s cool that he doesn’t look like everyone else. But when he’s asked to complete the assignment, he’s peppered with questions from his classmates.
With the book, he hopes to teach young children that it’s cool—and, more importantly, normal—to be different. “Growing up in a white town and white population or white spaces, you’re constantly the fly in the buttermilk,” he told the outlet. “And it was actually one of the things we went back and forth on…how do we address the fact that I’m adopted and different in my family, but also making sure that we’re not positioning Black as different, or brown as different.