Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match

Brown-skinned, red-haired Marisol combines soccer and pirate play, peanut butter and jelly burritos, and other choices adults and children call mismatched. When she tries to become what they expect, the loss of color and pleasure reveals the cost of tidy categories.

Use the bilingual edition to notice how language also coexists rather than asking a biracial child to explain identity. The Day You Begin surveys many outsider experiences; Marisol offers the more focused, exuberant rejection of either/or labels.