ANSONVILLE — A conversation with a fellow school employee sparked Bobbie Tillman to write his first children’s book as a teaching opportunity for elementary students.
Tillman works as a custodian for Ansonville Elementary School. For the past seven years in the school district, he has interacted with kids and learned from teachers. One day a teacher and Tillman were discussing the difficulties children from less fortunate neighborhoods have in school. Tillman knew that much of these challenges are due to those children’s situations at home, but he believes it doesn’t always have to be that way and that anyone has the potential to be successful.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘There are people from the ghetto and the projects that went on to do great things,’” Tillman said. “I was just thinking when I walked away from (the teacher), ‘We are all different colors, but we are all the same.’”
He went to his room inspired, took out a piece of paper and wrote down those words: We are all different colors, but yet we are all the same.
Tillman left that day ready to deliver the message of equality he believes God sent to him. As the days went on, he continued scratching down thoughts onto that paper, eventually creating a rough draft of a children’s book.
“The book rhymes,” Tillman said as he was getting ready to recite the book. “I thought about ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and how everybody loves ‘The Cat in the Hat.’ I thought it would get kids’ attention if it rhymed.”
Tillman created everything in the book. After he wrote the words, he went back and illustrated pictures for each of the pages. He even designed the placement and sizing of the printed words.
Every time the book refers back to the title, “We Are All Different Colors, But Yet We Are All The Same,” he drew a collage representing people of all different colors. Each collage is different, one is made up of splashes of color, another is an side outline of a child reading a book, followed by multiple colors of the same child.
The story runs through scenarios that show how we can be different from one another, but are ultimately unified by our humanity. It tells children that someone may come from a different neighborhood, but they still have the same red blood that runs through everyone. Tillman writes about how some people are tall or fast or strong, but again, we are all the same.
He wanted the book to cater to kids because of the joy he gets from working with them. In addition to being a custodian, Tillman also serves as a deacon at his church and interacts with the kids there. He credits his passion for working with kids to his own experience. He said he wished that someone reached out to him when he was younger to help him, which leads to him wanting to be a guiding hand for children.
Plus, he wanted children to learn this message early on in life, before adults influence their thought.
“I was writing it for kids because kids aren’t prejudiced,” Tillman explained. “You can see all the little kids on the playground, playing together, running from this end to the other, having a good time until their parents come out and say, ‘Don’t play with the little black girl, or Korean, or Mexican, or white.’ Until they do that, kids don’t see color. They know they are different between them all, but they are not prejudice.”
Tillman said he’s seen this first-hand: the younger children are all interacting with each other, but as they get older groups separate from each other based on color and they stop playing together.
“I want to reach to kids while they’re still young, and I know I can’t stop racism,” Tillman said. “But maybe I can help two or three children.”
Tillman received his first copy in December of 2019, months before Black Lives Matter protests broke out throughout the country in May following the death of George Floyd in police custody. He believes the message of the book has become much more prescient because of this ongoing racial strife.
“It’s for kids, but it seems like adults need this book too,” Tillman said.
He wants all children to be inspired from this book. It doesn’t matter where a child comes from or who their parents are, Tillman believes anyone can succeed in life.
So far about 70 of his 100 printed books have been sold. All the teachers at Ansonville Elementary School bought his book, according to Tillman, and almost everyone he talks to about the book wants to buy a copy. Those interested in purchasing a copy should reach out to Tillman himself, but he is hoping to have it online one day.
During the Anson County School Board meeting in August, Superintendent Howard McLean noted how he would like to get Tillman’s book to all the schools throughout the district.
Looking forward, Tillman is already working on another children’s book. The new rhyming story is already laid out as a draft on a scrap piece of paper he carries with him.