Jess and Ben are twins. Jess is a girl and Ben is a boy but in all the BIG ways, there is NO difference between them!
Explore with the children in your care the important issues of gender equality and respectful relationships. Combining cheerful illustrations and a simple but effective narrative, this book will help children to understand that, fundamentally, there is no difference between us.
This book encourages equality and respect for each other from the earliest of years. In order to reduce gender-based violence we need to teach gender equality and respectful relationships to young children. What better way than through a picture storybook? Children are visual learners and the match between illustration and text in this story will assist them to understand that we are all human - everyone feels, and everyone has hopes and dreams. Our gender should be and needs to be irrelevant.
Throughout the text, open-ended questions are provided on each spread so children have the opportunity to talk about their own experiences - allowing the child to have a voice. There are more in-depth Discussion Questions on pages 30 and 31 encouraging the reader and the child to think about each scenario, and engage with the message.
"We're all people with feelings, aspirations and dreams . . . no better or worse . . . it's the little differences that make us unique but it doesn't change the big ways that we are the same."
Susannah Low Designer and mother of two daughters
Author Biography:
Jayneen (aka Jay Dale) is an experienced early years educator, author and publisher. She started her teaching career in the 1980s as a primary school teacher in rural Australia. She then moved to Melbourne and taught at a number of inner-city schools. In 1985, Jay had a change of career and became an educational editor and publisher. In the early 90s, Jay and her partner moved to Japan to work as English teachers. They lived and worked in Japan for over three and a half years. In fact, Jay's first daughter was born there. On returning to Australia, Jay began work as an educational author/packager. Since that time, she has authored and produced numerous award-winning titles for the educational publishing industry. Jay is also an accomplished children's book author, writing a number of titles for such literacy series as ZigZags, Totally Kidz, Deadly and Incredible, and a children's picture book series for Penguin. She is currently working with an educational publisher as lead author of a literacy series. Jay has written over 100 titles in that series. Jay is a mother of three daughters and was a school councillor at her local school for over seven years. This time spent in schools both as a teacher and a parent inspired her to ask the question of her community: 'What are we doing in schools to protect our children from unsafe touch?' When she realised very little was actually being done, she decided to use her authoring and publishing skills to write Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept to help parents, carers and teachers to broach the subject of self-protection and to encourage children to speak up. After the encouraging response to Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept, she realised there was a need to further build upon the idea of children not keeping secrets about unsafe touch. Jay participated in Protective Behaviours professional development and attended numerous conferences on the topic to educate herself in how to keep children safe and provide them with prevention education. Jay then went on to develop and publish a comprehensive Body Safety and Respectful Relationship Teacher's Resource Kit as well as writing several more children's books on the topics of Body Safety, consent, respect, body boundaries and gender equality. Jay's ongoing passion for the safety and empowerment of children continues today with new manuscripts and free-to-download Body Safety resources always in the wings. I grew up in Surrey and studied illustration and graphics at Redruth Art College in Cornwall. After my degree I began my career as a freelance designer and illustrator, working on natural history and dinosaur books at first. I gradually moved into childrens publishing and worked as managing designer for Usborne Publishing in London for several years, where I designed books for children of all ages - baby books, lift the flap, puzzle and activity books and hundreds of covers, it was loads of fun! Occasionally I had the chance to illustrate in house and soon realised that I wanted to spend more time on illustration so decided to go freelance again. My illustration style is varied, I like using collage, painting traditionally and working digitally or a combination of these. I love trying out different styles and techniques and will always try to adapt my work to suit the particular project I'm working on. I've illustrated for many publishers including Ladybird, Lion Hudson, Hachette, American Girl and Usborne. I now live in Bournemouth with my husband, two daughters, two cats, and lots of frogs (in the garden pond!) We live only 10 minutes walk from the sea so can often be found on the beach building sandcastles and collecting sea shells especially during the summer holidays.
