Photo:Harper Collins
Harper Collins
When Rennie Dyball’s daughter was 7, the two were shopping in the grocery store when a great song came on over the speakers.
Naturally, Dyball started doing a little dance in the aisle, but her daughter looked at her with wide eyes and said, “Mommy, something is jiggling.”
Although Dyball (a former PEOPLE staffer) was initially “horrified,” the incident with her daughter made Dyball start thinking.
“Why did my 7-year-old think that a body jigging was so terrible?” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “She certainly didn’t learn that idea from me.”
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Dyball had an idea. If kids can learn to distinguish different bodies at such an early age, maybe parents can start the conversation about acceptance earlier. So, Dyball wrote her children’s picture book,B Is For Bellies: A Celebration of Every Body.
B Is For Belliesis an A to Z picture book that acts as an ode to self-love and aims to encourage kids to remember that every body is worthy of respect. There are 26 mantras throughout the book that highlight the different ways bodies ebb and flow.
“J is for jiggle: bodies bounce when they move. When you’re dancing, parts wiggle. Get into the groove!” Dyball writes for the letter ‘J.’
“C is for change: that’s what bodies do. Years change your appearance, but you’ll always be you,” says the mantra for the letter ‘C.’
Dyball says that in addition to representing multiple body types, she wanted her book to resonate with a wide range of races and ethnicities, abilities and gender expressions.
“Our goal was for every child reading the book to see themselves on our pages,” she tells PEOPLE. “It’s also my belief that when a child learns about accepting themselves just as they are, they also learn to accept other people, no matter how different they may look.”
B Is For Bellies: A Celebration of Every Bodyis available now at booksellers everywhere.
source: people.com
