the Quill and Palette

Just Like You

A Children's Book

by T. Leah Fehr-Thompson

Price: TBA

Availability: pending commission of illustrator

Shipped from and Sold by:

the QuillandPalette.com © 2009 T. Leah Fehr-Thompson

Calgary, AB, CA

Childhood is filled with imagination and speculation about every possibility in the universe.  What if aliens walked among us, disguised as humans… stuffed into the human suits that they wear, just as we wear our own disguises?  Childhood is also filled with fear of the unknown, insecurity and a yearning to belong.  Just Like You is a short comedic children’s story, written as a pantoum, of one alien’s struggle to fit in on Earth and his fear of being different than everyone else; his fear of misunderstanding and persecution, and his inherent yearning to be seen as one with his peers, despite his physical differences. 

On the surface, Just Like You is a whimsical rhyme about an alien who has outgrown his human-suit.  But the undertone of the story is less whimsical, and touches gently on a child’s need for acceptance, the fear of being different, and our societies remaining and unfortunate tendency to be prejudiced against anyone who is different from us, whether physically, religiously, culturally or otherwise. 

This book is dedicated to my son, who has been humorously convinced, since he was very young, that I am an alien in a human suit… and his proof is a large scar along my spine from childhood surgery, which he calls my zipper.  It is a scar that represents my own childhood struggle with being different from others, having endured the physical deformity of scoliosis, and the stigma, however self-imposed, that it led to.