160 pages
228mm x 145mm
ISBN-10: 1 85856 239 2
ISBN-13: 978 1 85856 239 1
April 2001
Reprinted due to popular demand January 2005


Discovering how astonishingly effective Persona Dolls can be in training young children - and the people who work with them - to understand and unlearn their prejudices inspired Babette Brown to write this book. Attitudes and prejudices are forming in children by the age of three, and research shows that these are likely to be negative towards people who are visibly different from themselves.
Relatively new to the UK, Persona Dolls have been successfully used in Australia and the US to challenge the values, stereotypes and prejudices that underpin racism and other social inequalities. They can provide an enjoyable, innovative and non-threatening way to build on children's sense of identity, self-esteem and confidence and to encourage them to respond to others with empathy, respect and sensitivity.

This book is a guide to how Persona Dolls can be used. Chapters explore:

• promoting empathy


• Persona Dolls in action


• a different kind of storytelling - and the stories to tell


• involving parents


• working and training with Persona Dolls


• reinforcing what the children from the Dolls


• resourcing for change

For Early Years advisers, lecturers and inservice trainers, students, practitioners and parents.
Babette Brown is the founder of EYTARN, the Early Years Trainers Anti-racist Network - for which she won the Guardian Jerwood Award - and author of Unlearning Discrimination in the Early Years.