Just in time for National Adoption Month, Larkspur author Nicole Todd Bailey is introducing young readers to Multicolored Monono, a new picture book released this past September that draws on her and her children’s experiences as a multiracial adoptive family.
This book tells the story of a unique, multicolored crayon who longs to fit in but faces unkindness and exclusion from the other crayons in the classroom, all of which belong to matching sets. Aimed at children ages 5–10, Multicolored Monono offers young readers new ways to think about difference, and encourages them to let their true colors shine.
The process of writing Multicolored Monono was a collaborative one, with Bailey’s two teenage children, Amara, 16, adopted from Ethiopia, and Kai, 15, adopted from the Marshall Islands, serving not only as inspiration for the book, but also as active advisors throughout the drafting process. Amara and Kai reviewed Bailey’s drafts “line by line” and provided input on illustrations. One area where they were particularly adamant: The book should not suggest that being different was easy.
“Many children’s books … have a rose-colored, neatly packaged resolution at the end,” Bailey said. “Ours offers hope for ‘brighter days ahead’ but avoids the false hope that everything can be fixed easily.”
The family has lived this reality firsthand. Experiencing exclusion, insensitivity and hurt from children and adults alike, Bailey watched her children grapple with challenges, cultivating courage and resilience in the process. “I would listen to their heartbreak at night,” she said, “then watch them get up the next morning, dig deep … and go back out into the world with hopes that the new day would be different—much like Monono.”
While some of these challenges arose from being a multiracial adoptive family, Bailey emphasizes that Amara and Kai’s struggles stemmed primarily from being people of color in communities where they were in the minority—first in Singapore, and then in Larkspur, where they have lived since 2021. “Multicolored Monono is not a book specifically about adoption,” Bailey said. “It is a book about children’s desire to be seen as they are and be included—reflecting the experiences, reactions and emotions of children who are noticeably different from their peers.”
Using the metaphor of a differently colored crayon, Bailey hopes to allow children of many identities to see themselves in Monono, “whether that difference is due to skin color, physical attributes, neurodiversity, gender or sexual identity, citizenship or family structure.” Bailey’s son, Kai, helped to take this even further, recommending that the author omit pronouns in the story to make it more inclusive, a suggestion which ended up in the final draft.
Though the book celebrates resilience, Bailey acknowledges that personal strength must be balanced with community support, which is not always readily available. Many people are “simply too busy or too comfortable or too unwilling to adjust for just one family,” Bailey said. Monono encounters this challenge in the book, navigating a community that seems friendly and supportive at first, but whose momentum only carries them so far, falling short of overcoming what Bailey’s Kirkus reviewer described as “unthinking insularity.”
Amid the complexity of difference and identity, Multicolored Monono is ultimately a story of resilience. “My children, and most marginalized children, have a strength beyond their years that develops out of necessity,” Bailey said. “This is what gives them the resilience to go back out and keep trying.”
‘Multicolored Monono’ is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org, which donates a portion of purchases to local bookstores based on zip code. Bailey will also make several school visits in Marin County in early 2026. More information on the author can be found at laneofourown.com.
