Woke Curriculum, DEI in Schools, and the Messy Beauty of Social Justice: What Co-Creating Children’s Books Can Teach Us About Color, Conflict, and Courage

What makes a hero a hero? What makes a villain a villain? And who gets to decide?

The Story Shapers is a book about misfit ideas—bad, wild, rule-breaking, beautiful ideas. It follows Bart, a reclusive rat who locks himself in an attic, convinced his ideas are too broken to share. But everything changes when two kids, Billy and Mary, find him under crumpled pages and bad story starts.

With a little magic (and a transformation into Bug and Bear), they help Bart see that his ideas are valuable precisely because no one has written them before.  It never mentions DEI or Social Justice or anything “woke.”

On its face, The Story Shapers is a playful romp through an attic of ‘bad ideas’—wild, rule-breaking concepts that don’t fit the mold. But underneath? It’s a direct invitation to explore themes like DEI in schools and woke curriculum.  Why?  Because under the surface, it shows kids how to practice social justice through co-creating stories.

The story ends with Bart realizing a simple truth: “The world we want needs the magic we choose.” Bug & Bear become story-shaping super-heroes, and, with that ending, the Bug & Bear Press publishing model invites kids to be story-shapers–empowing them to co-create the stories they love and the world they live in. 

Justice is creative. Justice is collaborative. Justice is as simple as telling stories and letting stories be told.

But… what even makes for a good story?

Bart’s Colors of Good and Evil

Bart thinks his stories are bad because all of the characters are doing things that they’re not supposed to be doing.  The ewes won’t sit in their pews.  The gooses won’t stay in straight queues.  The parrots won’t parrot, they’re out making news.

But Bart’s biggest struggles:  the colors that are BOUND to confuse.  

In Bart’s world, heroes wear violet; the villains, chartreuse.  Why those colors?  Well… they kind of picked themselves, to be honest.  

Starting with Violet: 

I’m a sucker for alliteration. I wanted a  “V” color to match up with villains, so Violet won that battle. Then, Bart’s rhyming obsession meant the word had to sound like “muse.” Chartreuse was as close as I could get. So, I settled myself on violet villains and chartreuse heroes.  

Then—plot twist—I learned that they’re direct opposites on the color wheel.

This deepened the metaphor I was going for so much further!  It prompted Bart’s next lamentation: “‘One fuels the other,’ that’s their excuse.”

Because it’s true… right? In order for any color to exist, it necessarily has to exist across from its opposite on the color wheel.  You can’t have a hero without a villain, you cannot have good without evil, you cannot have violet without chartreuse.

In a time when debates around DEI in schools, social justice, and woke curriculum dominate education policy, Bart’s color metaphor is more than poetic—it’s political.

Violet and chartreuse aren’t just colors on that stand opposite eachother on the color wheel and happen to start with V and rhyme with “muse.”  They’re stand-ins for the labels we assign and the systems we defend.

So, to carry the metaphor a bit further, we mixed up the visuals. We dressed each character half in violet and half in chartreuse–mirror opposites of each other.  

Another truth: each of us represents a little bit hero and a little bit villain.

It is, in fact, the human condition. No matter where you fall on the color-wheel–whehter you’re talking race, gender, religion, sexulaity, sexual orientation, or politics–you cannot exist AS YOU without our polor opposite.

It’s messy. It’s honest. And that’s the point. No one–good or bad–is purely one thing.

Painting Grace and the Danger of Monochrome

When I began writing Painting Grace—before that was even the title—I knew that color metaphor should be carried forward, somehow.

So I started exploring: What happens when we try to eliminate a color we don’t like?

On the RGB (red, green, blue), violet is 50% red, 50% blue, and 0% Green.  Chratruse is 50% red, 50% green, and 0% blue.  Neither violet heroes nor chartruse villains can exist with out red.  If red won’t blend with either blue or green and its just fight to eliminate any color that’s different, then we’re left with just the red.

Keep going, and red has nothing left to fight so it turns on itself.  It turns on nuance and shades of greays.  You lose the ability to color anything interesting, anything real.

Just like in art, when we strip away the full palette in society—when we suppress voices, erase experiences, or pretend that messy doesn’t belong—we end up with lifeless uniformity on one end, or chaos on the other.

That’s why I love what organizations like Anti-Racist Art Teachers are doing—showing how art education can be a powerful tool for teaching kids about identity, justice, and inclusion. Their lesson plans help kids explore the full color wheel—literally and metaphorically—and that’s exactly the kind of model we need more of in classrooms today.

Crayons Before Constitutions

I’ve long had a working title for a bigger project: Crayons Before Constitutions. Like the Bug & Bear Press publishing model, it’s based on the notion that a just world is creative and collaborative; not pre-determined and hierarchical.  It explores the idea that we need to flip the script and foster creativity before we demand obedience.

These concepts are why I keep coming back to color.

Color isn’t just visual—it’s metaphor. It’s inclusion. It’s rebellion. It’s identity. If we want to raise kids who build a better world, we need to teach them to be comfortable with the entire palette of ideas–even the ones they don’t like.  Especially the ones they don’t like.  

But, most importantly, as a concept, the need for opposites on a color wheel is accessible to kids. Colors are just that… colors. They’re fun things to paint and mix and experiement with… until grown-ups get involved and tell kids their doing it all wrong. But, if we work hard to keep the idea of the color wheel front and center in kids’ minds, maybe us grow-ups will remember a few truths as well.   

The Problem with Book Bans (Even the “Justified” Ones)

Which brings me to J.K. Rowling.

I strongly disagree with her. There’s no need or sense in debating her politics here. There is space, however, to debate how we respond to those politics.

Recently, I’ve seen calls to remove her books from the shelves because of her beliefs. As much as I dislike her (and, TBH, I’ve never read the books… it’s not a genre that interests me… so I can’t speak to them beyond their wild popularity), removing her books is as wrong as removing George Takei’s books. 

If you don’t like her politics, don’t make her famous.  Don’t buy her books, don’t stock her books, don’t read her books. But don’t artificially restrict them from someone who might find something they need within them. That defeats the whole point of this messy world in which we live.  

Book bans are the frontlines of the ‘woke curriculum’ non-sense. Who decides what’s too political, too inclusive, too uncomfortable to teach? Who decides that while a book, non-objectionable on its face, is objectionable because of the politics of the author. Gatekeeping is bad—no matter who’s doing it. Left, right, center—it’s the same result: fear dressed up as policy.

Restricting ideas is not–and will never lead to–justice. It’s fear, full stop. And when we police the ideas to which others have access because we disagree with the politics of the author, we lose the fight before it begins.

Because here’s the truth: Bad politics don’t get defeated by silencing them. They get defeated by better politics. And, indeed, the bad ones have to exist so the good ones have something to set themselves up against.

Artificially suppress one color or idea—any color or idea—and eventually the whole picture suffers.

Embracing Complexity

Notice I said “artificially suppress” one color or idea. Justice cannot be achieved by tipping the scale. Justice is creative. Justice is cooperative. Justice does not artificially tip any scales.

If we want to truly model DEI in schools, we can’t just preach inclusion—we have to embody it. That means embracing discomfort. It means letting our kids engage with social justice not as a moral checkbox but as a creative act. If we are going to create justice, we have to stop artificially tipping scales. We have to, instead, create space for all voices, all stories, all colors to exist.

That’s why the color metaphor that starts in The Story Shapers and carries through Painting Grace matters—not just to the stories themselves, but to how we frame justice, social-emotional learning, and diversity in education for kids. 

As Bryan Stevenson has said, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”  And, none of us is as good as the best thing we’ve ever done.  In each of us, there is a little bit of a hero and a little bit of a villain.  One cannot exist without the other.

That tension is essential to a good story. That tension is also essential to a just world. 
We don’t create justice by getting rid of things that are different from us or that we don’t like. 
We create justice in how we respond to those things; how we shape our story around those things.

The hero doesn’t scream and shout and demand that everyone ignore the villain. The hero shows the world how to face off against the villain, become better humans, and create a better world because of that villain.

Social justice can’t be manufactured. It can’t be engineered. It has to emerge—organically, honestly, and yes, messily. And that necessarily means allowing ideas with which we disagree. Yeah, it’s hard. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable. Yeah, it requires trust. And patience. And cooperation. And creativity.

But it’s worth it.